The government is eyeing starting the construction this summer and beginning to operate the plant in the summer of 2007 in the city where Japan has deployed ground troops for humanitarian assistance, government sources told Kyodo News Agency. The project is expected to be a turning point in Japan's reconstruction assistance policy toward Iraq, a shift from assistance centering on reconstruction assistance by troops to that based on official development assistance. Muthanna is the only province among Iraq's 18 provinces that has no power plant. Electricity supply is so bad that Samawah has a 10-hour blackout every day, according to the report.
The government has concluded that the construction is feasible even taking local security into consideration and plans to make a decision after it finishes calculating the costs of the project, including those for security, which are expected to be substantial. Japan usually conducts major aid projects with low-interest yen loans, but the envisioned thermal power plant would be built with grants because it is likely to take more time for Japan to resume yen loans to Iraq. But an official go-ahead may not be made immediately as Japanese authorities struggle to find what happened to a Japanese security guard, Akihiko Saito, who was shot and badly injured during an ambush by a militant Iraqi group in western Iraq over the weekend, it added.