Diamer Bhasha Dam: Govt to approach China, local banks for financing
PakTribune Pakistan News Service
September 3, 2012
http://paktribune.com/business/news/Diamer-Bhasha-Dam-Govt-to-approach-China-local-banks-for-financing-10322.html
ISLAMABAD: With power shortage increasing continuously in the face of
rising consumer demand, the government has decided to seek financing
from China for the mega $13 billion Diamer Bhasha Dam with power
production capacity of 4,500 megawatts and also take loans from domestic
commercial banks by offering guarantees.
According to sources, Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf will place a
request before his Chinese counterpart during the visit on September 10
for financing the Diamer Bhasha Dam, for which multilateral donors
including the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB) had sought
no-objection certificate (NOC) from India due to the dam "being situated
in a disputed territory".
The decision to approach China was taken in a meeting held at the
Planning Commission last month as Beijing had wide experience of
building large dams, a senior government official said. During the
meeting, different options were considered for arranging capital for the
dam, which is vital for wiping out most of the gap between electricity
demand and supply in the country.
In the meeting, the government officials also decided to borrow money
from banks with 50% guarantees to be provided by the central government
and the remaining by the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda).
The loans will be taken against security of assets like turbines of dams.
"The prime minister has been briefed on the plan for seeking financing
from China and he will discuss it with his Chinese counterpart during
the upcoming visit," the official said.
The Chinese government had already offered Pakistan skilled labour for
the construction of the dam. Beijing has 17,000 skilled workers, who
worked on the Three Gorges Dam, which is producing 30,000 megawatts of
electricity.
Sources said China had also assured Pakistan that it would hire a
company to finance the construction of the dam. China Development Bank
was also willing to pour money into the project. However, they said
China would seek guarantees from the Government of Pakistan.
Pakistan had been engaged with China since 2008 and had shared with it
the draft of a detailed engineering design of the dam.
In the draft, German firm Lemhyer put the cost of the dam at $8.5
billion in 2008 against estimates of $6.5 billion in 2005. The cost has
further gone up and now stands at $13 billion, say some estimates, as
the project has been considerably delayed compared to the government�s
plan to start construction work by 2009.
According to officials, the government has rejected a proposal to impose
surcharge on power consumers, like the one being used to finance the
Neelum Jhelum hydropower project, to raise funds for the Bhasha Dam.
"The proposal was opposed by different stakeholders as consumers were
already paying a higher power tariff," an official remarked.
Consumers are paying a surcharge of 10 paisa per unit for Neelum Jhelum
hydropower plant, which will generate Rs6 billion per annum for the project.
The country has been searching for alternative financing sources since
the multilateral donors asked Pakistan to seek NOC from India for Diamer
Bhasha dam. The donors instead offered to finance the Dasu hydropower
project. However, the government has rejected the donors� programme and
wants to complete Bhasha Dam first.
The Dasu project is situated 7 km upstream of Dasu village on Indus
River and 350 km from Islamabad. The project is in Kohistan district of
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
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