Govt taking concrete steps to tackle energy crisis

• Senate told that Rs 741 billion from SBP and commercial banks was borrowed in eight months

The Senate was informed Wednesday that the government had devised a comprehensive plan to overcome the energy crisis in the country and a number of initiatives have been taken in this regard.

Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal told the House during question hour that work was underway at Gaddani Power Project and Memoranda of Understandings have been signed in this regard. He said two power projects at Bin Qasim were also at advanced stage.

The minister said that the government has also started work on Thar Coal Project and under this one mining and three power projects will start functioning within three years. He added that China had also expressed consent to ten power projects at Thar.

To a supplementary question about the prime minister’s programme for provision of laptops to talented students, the minister said under the programme 30 billion rupees would be incurred during the five years and each year 150,000 talented students will be awarded laptops. He informed that said 800 million rupees had been approved for the Prime Minister’s Youth Skill Development Programme.

To another question, Minister of State for Education Balighur Rehman told the House that the government took effective steps to address the difficult situation of depreciation of Pakistani rupee and have succeeded to strengthen the national currency.

He said the government is making effort to realise official inflows from different sources including CSF, 3G license fee, receipts of euro bonds and inflows from multilateral and bilateral institutions as planned in the budget.

He said the government raised 312 billion rupees domestic debt from State Bank of Pakistan and 429 billion rupees from the Commercial Banks from June last year to February this year.