KARACHI:
As the repayment dispute continues over controversial rental power deals, the government has stopped Turkish firm Karkey Karadeniz from taking its ship-mounted power plant out of Pakistan’s port, officials said on Saturday.
Four ships carrying the 232-megawatt power plant and auxiliary equipment will remain anchored at Port Qasim until the government receives the part of advance payment made to the company when the agreement was signed three years back.
“Yes, we have been told not to give them permission to leave until further orders,” said Port Qasim Authority Chairman Vice Admiral Muhammad Shafi. “A letter in this regard was received from the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on Friday.”
NAB’s order follows widespread media coverage of its earlier directive to state departments to “facilitate Karkey in expatriating the ships” – a decision that would have been in contradiction to the Supreme Court’s order regarding the recovery of public money from rental power plants.
Karkey’s ships arrived as part of the government’s strategy to use rental power plants to address the severe energy crisis. The stopgap measure, however, came at a heavy price.
The government authorised upfront payments of millions of dollars to the power plants, often jacking up the amount to pacify private investors. Karkey received $79.05 million in advance payments.
Taking notice of corruption allegations, the Supreme Court took up the case, and, in March 2012, struck down the deals. It also ordered NAB to start investigations.
Karkey’s power plant did not produce more than 50 MW at any given time.
The company is not willing to divulge any information regarding the refund. Government officials were also unavailable for comment.
“I can’t say anything about any payments which the company has to make,” Karkey’s local representative Asad Mehmood told The Express Tribune.
“All I can tell you right now is we are waiting for the port to complete its formalities, which could take between four days and three months.”
Reportedly, Karkey agreed to pay $20 million (Rs1.9 billion) before it was allowed to take the ships. NAB says it will recover Rs22 billion from the sponsors of rental power plants.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 4th, 2012.
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@Muzaffar:
it is a gift of corrupt politician whom you chose to be your representative, the corrupt bureaucrats who prepared and facilitated such deals . . Mindset of blaming all other except self and finding fault s with democracy itself speaks the ignorance. Have you ever thought why democracy has succeeded in Muslim countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey ?. Why Arabs nations are crying to adopt it ? Why most developed countries in the word have democracy?
There is a need to think independently remaining unbiased of belief
what a beautiful gift of democracy it was.