LAHORE, Jan 9: After international competitive bidding, construction work on Diamer-Bhasha Dam Project will start in October this year. The project, on its completion, will store 6.4 million acre feet (MAF) water for agriculture, besides generating 4,500MW low-cost hydel electricity.

Wapda Chairman Shakil Durrani said this to a delegation of the Armed Forces War Course, National Defence University, Islamabad, at Wapda House on Saturday. The visiting delegation was headed by chief instructor Maj Gen Tahir Habib.

The chairman said Wapda was focused on the optimal utilisation of water and hydropower resources in the country. To a question, he said the international financial institutions had shown a keen interest in financing various Wapda projects because of their high economic internal rate of returns (EIRR).

Earlier, Wapda Member (Water) Syed Raghib Abbas Shah, briefing the delegation on water sector, said Wapda was constructing 15 mega projects in water and hydropower sectors. Mangla Dam Raising Project had been substantially completed, while Satpara Dam in Skardu and Gomal Zam Dam in South Waziristan Agency were expected to be completed in July and October this year, respectively, he added.

The delegation was further briefed that Jinnah Hydropower and three Khwar projects with accumulative generation capacity of 419MW would start contributing to the national grid this year.

The delegation was informed that in addition to executing mega projects in water and hydropower sectors, Wapda had been tasked to build 32 small and medium dams in all the four provinces and FATA. Of them, 12 dams will be constructed in the first three-year phase to provide gross storage capacity of about 2.5MAF for irrigating more than 635,500 acres of land through high efficiency micro irrigation system.

Pepco Managing Director Tahir Basharat Cheema, during his briefing on power sector, told the delegation that various reforms had been introduced in the country’s power sector to make it more efficient and customer-friendly. He said the government was taking a number of short, medium and long-term measures to bridge the gap between demand and supply of the electricity. Dilating upon the supply-demand side measures, he said more than 8,000MW electricity would be added to the national grid by December 2012.

Wapda Member (Power) Fazal Ahmad Khan, Member (Finance) Chaudhry Abdul Qadeer, MD (Administration) Naveed Akram Cheema, Wapda Secretary Imtiaz Tajwar and other officers concerned were also present.--Dawn