KABUL – CASA 1000 mega regional electricity transmission project facesdelay.
Officials from Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat (DABS), the country’s powerutility company, on Saturday said work on construction of CASA-1000 powerproject has been delayed for eight months due to some certain reasonsincluding that of financial.
According to DABS Chairman Amanullah Ghalib, the company has not paid the17 percent of the pre-paid money for the company which has contractedAfghanistan part of the project.
Based on the timeline, work on the project was supposed to kick off by theend of 2018; however, Ghalib said the work will start by the end of 2019.
“The CASA-1000 contract is related to the Tajikistan and Pakistan parts ofthe project,” Ghalib said. “The signing of contract on installation ofsubstations in Pakistan and Tajikistan in September, the timeline of theproject was affected and therefore seven to eight months of delay isexpected.”
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Analysts said delay in regional projects is a “big damage” forAfghanistan’s economy in coming years.
“When government fails in such big projects, people suffer the main loss,”said Taj Mohammad Talash, an economic affairs analyst.
CASA-1000 is one of the biggest power projects that transfer 300 megawattsof electricity from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
