ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal has said that China has been urged to include Diamer-Bhasha dam in energy projects to be undertaken under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
The minister, while speaking at the concluding session of the First CPEC Media Forum, said that energy projects of about $34 billion are being undertaken as part of CPEC in the first phase. If China agrees to the proposal, the project would be included in the next phase of the energy projects under the CPEC.
The construction of Diamer-Bhasha dam is expected to cost about $12 billion. Faced with the difficulty of finding funds for the 4,500MW project, the government had decided to divide it into separate dam and power generation projects. However, it is unclear which component of the project the government is interested in getting included in the CPEC.
The planning minister said the government was determined to perform the groundbreaking of the hydel project next year and had already completed land acquisition for the purpose. Some 14 power generation and a transmission line projects are included in the first phase.
The minister said that wind and solar energy projects would be commissioned in about a year, and the coal power projects by 2018. The hydel projects would be ready by 2020.
Speaking on the occasion, Chinese Ambassador Sun Weidong said there was no fixed limit for investment under the CPEC and that more could be made depending on the project for which it was required. “As CPEC progresses more investment is likely,” he said, adding that the CPEC was a process rather than a project and might take more than a decade to complete.
