CM Sindh applauded for achieving financial close for Thar power plants

Sindh Energy Minister Imtiaz Sheikh has congratulated the chief minister for achieving financial closure worth $1.3 billion for mega projects in coal mining and power generation sectors in Thar.

“We shall now be producing 15.4MTPA [million tonnes per annum] of coal and generating 2,640MW [megawatt] of cheap electricity from Thar coal fields,” the minister said.

In a press statement issued on Friday, the energy minister said Block VI of Thar coalfields would be producing urea that would meet the country’s projected requirement for the next 30 years.

On the one hand, he said, the provincial government was making progress in the energy sector to provide ease to people and on the other hand the federal government had again increased electricity tariffs and fuel prices

Sheikh said the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) was following an ideal economic policy of mobilising national human and natural resources for economic development in Sindh.

“Lowering of energy costs, employment and skill development, saving foreign exchange and raising national production is a correct economic strategy that shall enable us to compete in the world market and raise the standard of living of our working classes,” he said.

The minister said it was high time that the country dropped the policies of collecting revenues through indirect taxation and financing current expenditures by taking loans. Taking into account the potential of Thar coalfields, he said, the day was not far when Pakistan would become self-sufficient in its energy requirements. He said an important breakthrough in bio-saline agriculture that “has been made in Thar as the area which holds the promise of making Pakistan once again an exporter of agriculture crops and products”.

Although the Sindh government has been claiming that the Coal project has brought prosperity in the region, some groups of Thar have also protested against what they called the government’s apathy. On December 22, 2019, a large number of residents of Tharparkar and Umerkot arrived in Karachi to register protest against the government’s alleged failure to mitigate the miseries of the drought-hit Tharis.