Pakistan to buy electricity from Uzbekistan

Eurasia News

Pakistan to buy electricity from Uzbekistan

Pakistan to buy electricity from Uzbekistan

Tashkent, Pakistan: Pakistan is planning to buy electricity from Uzbekistan.

“We are interested in the rich natural resources of Uzbekistan, especially with respect to power,” said Pakistan’s ambassador to Uzbekistan, said Riaz Hussain Bukhari while talking to media in Tashkent.

According to him, both countries are negotiating to export 1,000 megawatts electricity from Uzbekistan to Pakistan from Uzbekistan through Afghanistan.

He added a meeting of Uzbek-Pakistani intergovernmental commission will discuss the issue in details during its forthcoming session.

The decision of enhancing trade relations between the two countries was taking during the meeting of the President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov and Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif in Tashkent last November.

It may be mentioned that the supply of electricity needs to build a high-voltage line through Afghanistan to Pakistan while line from Uzbekistan to Kabul is already working since Soviet era and already providing electricity to Kabul.

The parties are working on a project, according to which it will be brought to the Pakistani city of Peshawar. The main sponsors of the project, according to the Ambassador, will be financial institutions as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and Islamic Development Bank.

Riaz Hussain Bukhari pointed out that today the Uzbek-Pakistani relations remains a huge untapped potential to reveal which largely hinders development in Afghanistan. “Due to poor logistics, it is very difficult to implement. We want to be able to direct land communication between the countries, which, unfortunately, does not allow the situation in Afghanistan”, he said.

The Ambassador recalled that during high-level talks in Tashkent (during the visit of Prime Minister of Pakistan in November 2015), the sides considered the possibility of participation of Uzbekistan in the Sino-Pakistan economic corridor —CPEC. Major infrastructure projects will give great opportunities to Uzbekistan to connect it with deep-water ports of Karachi and Gwadar through CPEC.