Moving forward on Thar Coal

While this newspaper is sceptical of energy policy so reliant on coal, we feel coal is necessary component of solution

Ordinarily, when the government does something right after a significant delay, our attitude has been: ‘better late than never’. But with the recent groundbreaking at the Thar Coalfields by the Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company, we are more inclined to say: ‘it’s about time’.

The scale and scope of the coalfields in Thar was first discovered in the early 1990s. The Sindh government has effectively been sitting on literally a buried treasure of energy for more than 20 years. For the first decade and a half, they at least had some legitimate excuses, mostly to do with how little financial and political autonomy they were granted by the federal government (although even this excuse is somewhat debatable). For the past four years, however, that excuse has not existed. Sindh had both the financial and legal wherewithal to engage in the project and a committed, well-respected local investor in the form of Engro Corporation practically begging them for the go-ahead. At long last, the serially inept Sindh government appears to have got its act together just long enough for work to start on the coal mining project.

Yet, even now, there appear to be some hurdles that are left. We are disturbed to hear, for instance, that for a project that is supposed to have achieved a financial close, its bankers still have concerns about providing the loans for the project. When was the Sindh government planning on assuaging those fears? And why has it not addressed them already? While this newspaper is sceptical of a national energy policy so thoroughly reliant on coal, we do feel that coal is a necessary component of the solution to the medium-term crisis. And unfortunately for the rest of the country, control over how successful the national coal policy will be rests entirely in the hands of a Sindh government that does not appear to have grasped the urgency of the situation. Perhaps, we should be more grateful that the project has at least started. It may indeed bring much-needed investment and prosperity to Tharparkar, one of the poorest districts in Pakistan. But for that to happen, the provincial government must change its ways.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 2^nd, 2014.

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