More power

If the US knows how to hit Pakistan where it hurts the military most (aid), it also seems to have zeroed in on what the Pakistani public would like the most: a way out of the terrible power crisis. The government has just given a go ahead to USAID to conduct a feasibility study for a 4500 MW power project from Central Asian Republics.

An alphabet soup of a project, TUTAP for Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the project is to utilise multiple energy sources from multiple countries. There is the considerable hydropower potential of Tajikistan. Then there is going to the thermal power from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The project might rack up a bill of $14 billion in power generation and transmission network through Afghanistan.

The power problem in Pakistan arises not from any lack of installed capacity because the latter is still in excess of our power demand. The problem is the deficit in cheap electricity. The numbers that the folks at the USAID seem to have crunched make the TUTAP look like a good deal on that end. The power generated within those three countries would be transmitted at a cost of Rs 4 to 3.5 per unit.

Following the model of all developing countries, Pakistan too has a higher growth for electricity demand (8 per cent in our case) than the growth of its economy. The reason for this is simple: lots of people getting on to the grid for the first time; rising prosperity also means people will use up more electricity.

Though Pakistan’s productive capacity (inclusive of the cheap and exorbitantly expensive variety) is more than demand, even that will change, given that our expected demand is going to be 25000 MW by 2015.

The hiccup, of course, is Afghanistan. Prime location, as has been the area’s woe since the millennia, affords the country a unique bargaining position. It can use only 300 MW itself. But anything and everything has to pass through the country. If the Americans can only figure out a way, by eking out a deal with local tribes or militias maybe, to keep the infrastructure safe, then this source has an expected expanded capacity of 10000MW.

Not bad public diplomacy.