The 720MW Karot hydropower project being built on Jhelum River near Karot village, some 1.7 kilometers upstream of Karot Bridge and 74 km upstream of Mangla Dam is being completed on a very fast pace. Chairman China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) Authority, Lt Gen Asim Saleem Bajwa (Retd) in a tweet said that 88% work on the project has been completed already and the completion of the project is expected to be in April 2022.
The $1,780 million Karot hydropower has provided direct employment to more than 5000 local people. The project is being developed on a Build-Own-Operate and Transfer (BOOT) basis at an estimated cost of $1.98bn including a development cost of $1.698bn and interest during construction of $243m by Karot Power Company Private Ltd, comprising of M/s Three Gorges South Asia Investment Ltd (TGSAIL) and Associated Technologies (Pvt) Ltd of Pakistan.
The project is being constructed on a concrete gravity of 91 metres high dam with a crest length of 320 meters near the village of Gohra. The dam’s reservoir will be approximately 152m cubic metres in volume, with a length of 27 kilometers. Karot power project has the capability to generate 3.249 billion units of clean electricity per year for the national grid
The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) had approved in February 2016 the project’s levelized tariff at 7.57 cents per unit for 30 years at an exchange rate of Rs101.6 per dollar.
