Afghanistan’s Taliban administration says it is awaiting the transfer of $100mn from the World Bank in order to restart work on the rollout of the Afghan section of the Central Asia-South Asia Electricity Transmission and Trade Project, or CASA-1000.

An April 2 report from Tajik daily Asia-Plus, citing Afghan publication TOLOnews, described the situation.

Afghan Minister of Energy and Water Resources Mateullah Abid was reported as saying that CASA-1000 was 70%-complete in Afghanistan, with around 95% of the required equipment already in place. 

Afghanistan’s national power utility Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat (DABS) has said that the Afghan section of the $1.2bn CASA-1000 infrastructure would cost around $260mn.

The rollout of the project in Afghanistan was suspended after the August 2021 return to power of the Islamist fundamentalist Taliban.

However, in February last year the World Bank said  that it had agreed to restart the CASA-1000 project in Afghanistan amid concerns among the other participating countries—Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Pakistan—that they risked $1bn of stranded assets.

It added that the resumption would only take place within a ring-fenced structure that would ensure all construction payments and future revenue are managed outside of Afghanistan and do not involve interim Taliban administration systems. The structure would also mean a strengthened commitment to the use of international consultants to supervise progress and third-party monitoring to verify progress and certify contractor invoices, it said.

CASA-1000 is designed to interconnect the power grids of the four participating countries, allowing for hydro power-generated electricity to be exported from the two Central Asian states to Pakistan in South Asia via Afghanistan.

The project was approved by the World Bank board as far back as March 2014 with financing from the International Development Association (IDA).

Despite the Afghanistan pause, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan and Pakistan continued with the implementation of CASA-1000 and construction activities were nearly complete in all three countries, the World Bank previously said.

Earlier this week, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan linked their grids with a two-way power line that will form part of CASA-1000.