The Nation/17-07-2020

ISLAMABAD: Keeping in view the vision of the Prime Minister Imran Khan and Minister of State/ Chairman Board of Investment (BOI) Atif R. Bokhari, BOI undertook efforts to establish a first ever-solar captive power plant for SEZs in Pakistan. In this regard, BOI facilitated signing of a tripartite memorandum of understanding (MoU) between state owned enterprises including Faisalabad Industrial Estate Development & Management Company (FIEDMC), Power China Jiangxi Electric Power Construction Co. Ltd (JEPCC), a subsidiary of Power China and Henan Zhonghui Electric Power Engineering & Consulting Co. Ltd (HZEPEC). According to BOI the Chinese Companies have proposed to setup a Photovoltaic Power Project of 700MW for the two SEZs of FIEDMC namely M3-Industrial City and Allama Iqbal Industrial City. The provisionally estimated total investment of the project is $630 million; wherein Chinese companies will come as financers and SEZ developer/FIEDMC could provide land on lease or to be an equity investment partner in the project. The project will be completed in three phases as per the electricity demand of the SEZs. FIEDMC will provide the estimated power requirement for both the SEZs, along with the status of infrastructure inside and outside SEZ for power distribution from FIEDMC. It is planned to adopt BOLT (build-own-lease-transfer) cooperation method for the project, which is a first ever, BOLT model in Pakistan.