Jolt to China: Unhappy with strict conditions, Pakistan rejects Beijing aid for $14 billion PoK dam
Islamabad: Pakistan has been forced to reject China's aid for the $14 billion Diamer-Bhasha Dam, which the country plans to build in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir after China put some strict conditions regarding the dam.
The Chinese conditions were about taking ownership of the project, operation and maintenance cost and securitization of the Diamer-Bhasha project by pledging another operational dam.
Pakistan has asked China to remove it from the $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and let them build it on their own.
Pakistan has been struggling to raise money from international institutions like the World Bank in the face of Indian opposition to the project on the Indus River in PoK.
Neither the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB) nor China would finance the dam, therefore, the government decided to construct the reservoir from its own resources, the Express Tribune on Thursday quoted Water Resources Secretary Shumail Khawaja as saying.
Pakistan decided to take the dam project off the table just days before the 7th Joint Cooperation Committee (JCC) meeting with China, which is scheduled for November 21 in Islamabad, it said.
India skipped the Belt and Road Forum (BRF) in May this year due to its sovereignty concerns over the CPEC.
The issue of excluding the Diamer-Bhasha Dam from the CPEC framework also featured in the Cabinet Committee on CPEC which met last week, the paper said
The project will have the capacity to generate 4,500MW of electricity in addition to the storage capacity for six million acre-feet of water, which the country desperately needs due to shrinking storages.