WORLD BANK AGREES TO RESTART THE AFGHANISTAN CASA-1000 POWER PROJECT

An official ceremony of lunching CASA 1000 Project (file photo / kabar.kg).

Tue 26 February 2024:

The World Bank has announced that it has agreed to restart the Central Asia-South Asia Electricity Transmission and Trade Project (CASA-1000) in Afghanistan amid concerns among the other participating countries -Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Pakistan – that they risk $1billion of stranded assets.

However, the WB said the resumption would only take place within a ring-fenced structure that would ensure all construction payments and future revenue are managed outside of Afghanistan and do not involve the Islamic Emirate government.

The structure would also mean a strengthened commitment to the use of international consultants to supervise progress and third-party monitoring to verify progress and certify contractor invoices, it said.

The $1.2bn CASA-1000 regional power project is designed to interconnect the power grids of the four participating countries, allowing for hydro power-generated electricity to be exported from the two Central Asian states to Afghanistan and to Pakistan via Afghanistan.

The project was approved by the World Bank board in March 2014 with financing from the International Development Association (IDA), but in Afghanistan it was paused, with all implementation activities stopped, in the wake of the return to power of the Islamic Emirate.

Before the project was paused, about 18% of the towers for the Afghanistan portion of the CASA transmission line had been erected and about 95% of the materials and equipment needed to complete the project in the country had been supplied, according to the World Bank.

Despite the Afghanistan pause, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan and Pakistan continued with the implementation of CASA-1000 and construction activities are nearly complete in all three countries, it added.

The ring-fenced resumption, said the World Bank, would be in two phases: construction, expected to take three years, and operations after that.

Its statement concluded: “During the project construction phase, the World Bank will make payments directly to the offshore accounts of international contractors and consultants, based on verification of invoices by the independent monitoring agency.

“For the operations phase, Offshore Account Bank (Abu Dhabi) arrangements are in place to ensure that payments and revenue are ring-fenced offshore as per commercial contractual agreements with requirements for no objection for use for specified purposes, including purchase of electricity from Tajikistan and Kyrgyz Republic under the CASA-1000 and other existing power purchase agreements.”

The Taliban says that, any project that is implemented in Afghanistan should be done once the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has been informed.

The Taliban also said Afghanistan’s conditions should be taken into consideration.

“We are ready to cooperate. There is security in Afghanistan and there are facilities to implement the project and the system cooperates in the necessary sectors and will not be an obstacle,” said Zabiullah Mujahid, IEA’s spokesman.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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