Dam-scarce and flooded

Pakistan has survived with only 150 water reservoirs, including 2 large dams since 1976

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Macro Bite # 110

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Pakistan is known as a 'dam-scarce country', and the significance of constructing more dams needs to be realized more than ever following the recent floods.

During the 1970s it was planned that building one mega-dam every decade would be necessary for Pakistan, but not a single dam could be constructed in the last 46 years.

The construction of Mohmand Dam and Diamer Basha Dam was undertaken during the past government only and the timelines for completion are December 2025 and August 2029, respectively.

In the absence of mega dams, Pakistan continues to remain one of the most water-stressed countries in the world. Pakistan wastes 30 million-acre feet (MAF) of its floodwater every year to the sea whereas only this monsoon 90 MAF of water has gone downstream Kotri to the sea that otherwise could have been stored and used for agriculture and power generation.

GRAPHIC OF THE DAY

The United Nations Development Program and Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources have warned that Pakistan could face absolute water scarcity by 2025

Source: World Resources Institute

The total storage in major reservoirs i.e. Tarbela, Mangla, and Chashma was 13.516 million-acre feet (MAF). This has been reduced to 9.875 MAF due to siltation and sedimentation

Source: Federal Flood Commission Pakistan

INSTAGRAM POST

Rising number of injuries due to floods — www.instagram.com

⚫ Number of injured people due to floods rose by 159% in a week

 ⚫ 12,722 injured people have been reported as of September 8 (+159% in a week)

View more

TWEET

Ahmed Jamal Pirzada @ajpirzada

Pakistan's default risk followed the same path as some other EM economies pretty well up until now, except that the same shocks affected us much more due to extremely weak fundamentals. However, more recently, Pak has started to behave in a completely different way (for worse).

Robin Brooks @RobinBrooksIIF

There was lots of distress in frontier markets some months ago: (i) that stress has abated, though many countries are still unable to issue; (ii) more importantly, none of that stress spilled over to systemic EMs like Brazil or South Africa. With @JonathanPingle & @econchart https://t.co/xoqLaLyT4n

What Else We’re Reading

• Pakistan races to keep flood water out of power stations that supply electricity to millions of people (Reuters)

• Flood response goes digital to ensure transparency (Dawn)

About Us: Macro Pakistani is a data-driven research platform that aims to provide a basic understanding of Pakistan’s economy. If you have an interest in contemporary news but are currently overburdened with sensationalism and specialized vocabulary, we are the platform for you.

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