MNA – Pakistan’s Minister for Power Omar Ayub Khan says his country is looking forward to boost its existing power cooperation with Iran.

During a Monday meeting with Iranian Ambassador to Pakistan Mehdi Honardoost in Islamabad, Ayub Khan said that Pakistan is ready to hold negotiations on the renewal of the agreement on100MW electricity import to Balochistan province.

The two sides stressed the need to continue joint efforts in the power sector on both power generation and transmission.

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 the border areas of Balochistan province.

The first power transmission agreement between Pakistan and Iran was signed in 2002 under which the Islamic Republic was obliged 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, according to Ayub Khan, there is a problem on Pakistan side because importing such quantity of electricity requires a robust transmission system, which requires a lot of investment.