LAHORE: The Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) on Monday signed a contract worth Rs10.81 billion with a French company for refurbishment and upgradation of six power generating units installed at Mangla station.

The contract comprising package-1 and 7 is a part of Mangla Refurbishment Project. The contract was signed at a ceremony held at Wapda House on Monday, according to a spokesman.

Wapda General Manager (hydel development) Engineer Muhammad Arshad Chaudhry and representative of the company Alstom Hydro France, Benoit Dhien, signed the agreement on behalf of their organisations.

Wapda members (power and finance), senior officers, and representatives of the company and USAID also attended the event.

The Mangla Refurbishment Project envisaging additional power of 310MW will be implemented in various phases, wherein the generating units will be refurbished by closing down one tunnel (two generating units) at a time.

First two units will be refurbished by 2018, the next two by 2019 and the other two by 2020.

Refurbishment of remaining four units will be carried out in the next phase. The approved PC-I cost of the project is Rs52.224bn.

The USAID is providing $150 million as grant for the purpose, while rest of the amount will be arranged by Wapda through loans.