Enoc to approve power projects

Islamabad: The executive committee of the national economic council (Ecnec) will approve a number of multibillion-rupee projects for power generation and distribution, and infrastructure development when it meets under Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani.

According to the agenda, the prime minister will consider the project of power enhancement and distribution of seven power distribution companies, the construction of Jagran 43.5 megawatts (MW) run-of-the river hydro power project in Azad Jammu Kashmir and interconnection of independent power producers (IPPs) to the national grid (phase-3).

The council will also consider the scheme for the electrification of villages in the Dera Bugti district of Balochistan.

All of Pakistan’s eight distribution companies (Discos) are presently faced with multiple challenges as their power distribution systems do not provide complete geographic coverage, have a shortage of capacity in areas they cover.
According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the distribution systems of Pakistani Discos are heavily loaded and in parts already overloaded, with high losses and poor reliability levels. If recent increases in demand continue, power shortages and the already frequent customer disconnections or load shedding will become much more regular unless all elements of the power sector are significantly improved urgently.
Significant investment requirements remain on the distribution systems of the eight Discos to enable the power to be effectively, reliably, and safely delivered to satisfy the demands of existing and new customers, observing the necessary environmental and social safeguard requirements.

The bank says, there was also the need to address compliance with regulatory requirements. To date, these have not been priority issues for the Discos — they are generally aware of the regulatory requirements but will not be able to achieve compliance at this stage.

To support the power distribution sector expansion, the government has prepared the Power Distribution Sector Road Map, 2008–2017, and approved the corresponding Investment Plan for Discos. The total investment requirement for the Discos for 2008–2017 is estimated at $5.2 billion. The investments consist of improvements to the secondary transmission grid (STG), distribution of power (DOP), energy loss reduction (ELR), capacitors, and other required investments to the distribution system.

The next Ecnec meeting will consider for approval a number of projects for the hometown of the prime minister including the award of 100 scholarships to Bahauddin Zakria University, Multan; sewerage and water supply project for Multan city; and the Multan Southern Bypass.

The council is likely to give green signal to a project for the widening and further deepening of the existing channels in Port Qasim and extension of Gujranwala Bypass. A scheme for the replacement of the Pakistan Railways’ existing signal gear system will be discussed in the meeting and likely to be given go ahead.

Ecnec will also discuss a Rs17.6billion-project to replace Pakistan’s existing leased Paksat-I satellite with the new Geo-Synchronous Orbit (GSO) satellite. The Pakistan Telecommunication Satellite System (Paksat-IR) will design, develop, manufacture and launch a GSO communication satellite to replace the existing leased satellite Paksat-I, located at 38° East, by early 2011. The new communication satellite (Paksat -1R) will have 30 transponders, 12 in C-Band and 18 in Ku-Band, each of 36 MHz Bandwidth.

PSDP: The meeting will also discuss the resentment found in the provinces these days over the freeze in the release of funds from the federal government funded Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP). The government had earlier planned to cut Rs100billion from the PSDP, but now it seems that the final cut can be between Rs130billion and Rs150billion.

The government wants to finance its budget deficit through a massive cut in the PSDP