Jeddah, May 19, 2012: The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) in partnership with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has signed a US$133 million agreement for long-term lease finance (Ijara) facility for the development of two wind power projects in the Sindh province of Pakistan. A consortium of local financial institutions comprising National Bank of Pakistan, Faysal Bank, United Bank Limited, Allied Bank and Meezan Bank are also participating in the transaction. Under an innovative risk
participation structure between IDB and ADB, the project companies were able to raise 100% Islamic financing for these important infrastructure projects.
The projects are sponsored by the Fauji Foundation and Tapal Group in Pakistan. Once complete, the projects shall add generation capacity of 100MW to the national grid under long term Energy Purchase Agreement with the National Transmission and Distribution Company (NTDC) of Pakistan and thereby make a significant contribution to improving the power supply situation in the country.
These projects are the first generation wind energy projects that Pakistan has embarked on. “Pakistan has enormous potential to tap wind energy, and successful implementation of these projects is expected to bring in further investment in developing more wind projects in Pakistan.”, said Walid Abdelwahab, Director, Infrastructure Dept at IDB.
IDB has been a long term development partner of Pakistan and has been involved in both public and private sector projects. Since its inception, IDB’s cumulative operations in Pakistan have reached to almost US$7.5 billion.