Islamabad, 4th February, 2015: The GoP's initiatives of developing power generation projects based on coal and "Regasified Liquefied Natural Gas" (R-LNG) has sparked a lot of interest of the international as well as local investors' community. While work is in progress on options like hydel, wind and solar for power generation, the government is also taking new initiatives on priority to generate power from coal and LNG. This was stated by the Minister for Water & Power Khawaja Muhammad Asif while addressing the "Stakeholders Consultative Conference on Coal and R-LNG based Power Generation Projects" held today at Serena Hotel Islamabad which he was presiding as Chief Guest.  The conference was organized by the Ministry of Water & Power and Private Power & Infrastructure Board (PPIB) with the objective to seek views from the stakeholders regarding challenges being encountered by them in developing IPPs and suggestions to improve the present Power Policy, Short Term Guidelines and Security Package Agreements (Implementation and Power Purchase Agreements) with the aim to make them more productive and effective. The Conference was also attended by the State Minister for Water & Power, Chaudhry Abid Sher Ali, State Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources, Mr. Jam Kamal Khan, Secretary Water & Power Mr. Mohammad Younus Dagha, Managing Director PPIB Mr. Shah Jahan Mirza  besides high level government officials from various federal/provincial ministries/departments and local/foreign representatives from different stakeholders, World Bank, IFC, and various local banks' representatives.

Khawaja Muhamad Asif said that the power sector has number of problems like circular debt, low recovery of Discos etc., and these challenges are priority areas of the government. He told the participants that the government is actively working on Transmission Lines Policy to attract the investors with their suggestions and by sorting out the issues being faced by them. The Minister assured the participants that due to steps being taken by the government, the investors and the public would get some tangible relief in the power sector by end of this year.

Officials from Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources shed light on various aspects of     R-LNG and its usefulness towards power generation. Managing Director PPIB also highlighted the importance of R-LNG and Coal for power generation. He conveyed that under the "Clean, Affordable and Reliable Energy" (CARE) Program, the GoP is planning to establish IPPs of 3600 MW through R-LNG for which advertisement will be placed in the national and international print media shortly. Besides this, R-LNG is also being arranged for existing thermal IPPs to cut generation cost and achieve higher efficiency, he added.

The Conference resulted into an interactive session, in which the representatives of investors exchanged their views and explained the challenges hurdling their efforts in power generation and tabled their suggestions to remove the bottlenecks and procedural delays, while the government officials assured their fullest cooperation in addressing their apprehensions and reservations.