"Pakistan is ready to hold negotiations on the renewal of the agreement on 100MW electricity import to Balochistan province,", Ayub Khan said during a Monday meeting with Iranian Ambassador to Pakistan, Mehdi Honardoost, in Islamabad.
The two sides stressed the need to continue joint efforts in the power sector on both power generation and transmission.
Pakistani Federal Minister for Power, Omar Ayub Khan, (right), met Iranian Ambassador to Pakistan, Mehdi Honardoost, (left), on Monday to discuss bilateral electricity cooperation. (Photo: screenshot of Pakistan Government's tweet).
Honardoost, for his part, noted that Iranian companies and contractors are ready to take part in the neighboring country’s power sector.
Pakistan has been importing electricity from Iran for over a decade to meet the demand of Balochistan province, that lies on Iran's south-eastern border.
The first power transmission agreement between Pakistan and Iran was signed in 2002 under which Tehran was to send 34MW of electricity to the neighboring country. The deal was upgraded to 73MW later and finally reached 100MW months ago.
Last year, Iran expressed readiness to provide up to 3,000 MW electricity to Pakistan. However, the deal has not come through because "importing such quantity of electricity requires a robust transmission system, which requires a lot of investment", explained Ayub Khan.
Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani, has urged his cabinet to further develop what he called "power diplomacy" in a bid to export more Iranian electricity to the neighbouring countries. " This is a good step to export power to our neighbours as well as other countries", Rouhani told the government ministers on Monday. He also mentioned that "it's important to exchange power with other countries and get connected to Asian or European power grids."