Baqar HussainSindh Engro Coal Minning Company (SECMC) Chief Executive Officer Shamsudin Ahmed Sheikh has informed that five more coal-fired power plants would be set up in block II of Thar by December 2021 and the total production capacity of coal based electricity of Thar would be expanded to around 3,000 megawatts.
He was talking to a group of journalists in Islamabad at the site of the project in Islamkot, Tharparkar, said a statement issued here on Wednesday.
He informed that the coal mining project’s total cost was $845 million which would be on the basis of 75:25 debt to equity ratio and would consist of 31.5% foreign and 68.5% local debt.
“The main sponsors of the project are Sindh government with 54.7% share, Engro and Thal Limited with 12% each and Habib Bank Limited (HBL) with 10%,” he remarked.
Sheikh said that the total cost of the two 330 MW mine mouth power plants would be $1.1 billion with 75:25 debt to equity ratio and it would consist of 75% foreign and 25% local debt.
The main sponsors of the project, he added, were Engro with 50.1% share while its other shareholders were Liberty, HBL and China Machinery Engineering Company (CMEC) and others.
He said that the Sindh Government had been a key enabler for the Thar project and has committed $110 million equity investment for phase-I and has provided a backup for sovereign guarantee to the federal government of $700 million.
He said although the initial cost of the electricity per unit would be higher (10 cent per unit in the first year) but it would gradually reduce with the passage of time and after about 6-8 years the production cost per unit would be as low as 6 cent which would be even lower as compared to that of hydel power.
The SECMC CEO informed that since the financial close of phase-I in block-II, interest in setting up Thar Coal based plants had surged and major industrial houses of the country and prominent Chinese investors had expressed an interest in obtaining coal from SECMC to set up power projects.
Syed Zaki Hussain
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