ISLAMABAD: The Central Development Working Party (CDWP) on Wednesday gavego-ahead to 31 projects worth Rs713 billion.
From it eight projects costing Rs694.8 billion were referred to ExecutiveCommittee of National Economic Council (ECNEC) for review, reported *ExpressTribune.*
The Neelum-Jhelum hydropower project originally envisioned in 1989 at acost of Rs15.3 billion has seen its cost soar to a mammoth Rs500.3 billionunder the present governments’ tenure.
Not only this makes Neelum-Jhelum hydropower project, the world’s mostexpensive hydel project undertaking ever but also translates to its rate ofelectricity production costing over Rs13 per unit.
Previously, the cost of this project had been revised upwards to Rs404billion from Rs275 billion in December 2015 by the present government.
The project has been marred by delays and the national exchequer has had tobear the brunt of these cost overruns, highlighting the government’sincompetence and inefficiency to execute projects on time.
But CDWP forwarded this project to Ecnec for its final go-ahead at a costof Rs500.3 billion, said an official handout.
Flouting Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) ban, the CDWP gavego-ahead to over a billion rupees of projects in the constituency of formerPrime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s son in law Captain (retd) Mohammad Safdar.
Closing date of collection Neelum-Jhelum surcharge was already forwarded toJune 2018 by the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC), said the financeministry.
Also, CDWP gave go-ahead to the hiring of consultants at a cost of Rs100million for third-party approval of the Neelum-Jhelum Hydropower project.