Today marks a significant achievement for STDC, witnessing the exceptional hard work and dedication of our colleagues towards achieving our set goals. Our deep appreciation to the clients, vendors and investors for their continuous help and support.
STDC has been able to go beyond its routine work, we have been living our dreams by making a huge contribution towards reshaping people living. It is this purpose that drives us to strive hard to achieve excellence. May our future endeavors be equally successful and rewarding.
As a developing economy with strong and increasing demand of electricity, we need such initiatives and projects in energy sector. This boosts confidence of domestic and foreign investors to strengthen the economic growth of the country. Power industry is a very capital intensive business mainly comprising of Generation, Transmission and Distribution of electricity. Government of Sindh has taken various initiatives in this sector which plays an important role in the economic growth of the country. One of the initiatives is the establishment of Sindh Transmission & Dispatch Company (Pvt) Limited (STDC) with an aim to establish, own, operate and maintain transmission lines which will be setup in Sindh Province to cater the energy demand of the people to help in complementing the efforts in the transmission line industry.
Being a new entity, STDC had to apply for a Special Purpose Transmission Line license (SPTL) with the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) for the double circuit transmission line. Subsequently, SPTL for a period of 30 years was awarded on 17th December 2015. Within a short period, we submitted the Tariff Petition to the authority in which declaration of all costs related to the project were claimed with a feasible Return on Equity to reach an economically viable tariff. Major costs included the project cost, declaration of costs pertaining to Debt Servicing, Insurance during construction & operations, Operations & Maintenance, Interest during Construction & Operations contributing towards Capacity Charge and any other costs specifically relevant to the project. Our team worked diligently to satisfy the authority and general public in the Public Hearing of the petition held on 18th March 2016. We all at STDC tried to convince with clarity to the authority through our replies to all the queries raised within the shortest possible time. Determination by the authority was given on 10th February 2017. As tariff awarded to STDC was not as expected economically viable, we subsequently filed a Motion for Review of our Tariff Petition with the authority on 17th February 2017 which is under review by NEPRA.
From legal perspective, a Tripartite Wheeling Agreement for the transmission of electric power is also under negotiation with relevant partners for which Lincoln's Law Chamber having a good repute is on our panel. For the growth of the company, STDC team continually welcomes and meets various local and foreign investors to tap the potential in the transmission line industry by finding innovative solutions to the industry problems. Various international organizations consent to become a funding resource for the projects which STDC may materialize in the future. Hence, STDC has the technical as well as financial expertise to perform projects on BOOT, BOT, BOO or BLT basis.
Hence, with the overall vision of the country to take power generation capacity to around 30,000 MW, the potential in this electric power industry is huge and STDC welcomes domestic as well as foreign investors. We say 'We are small but with Astronomical Vision!'