TEHRAN - Iran’s Energy Minister Ali Akbar Mehrabian says the country is ready to provide funding and expertise to restore some 5 gigawatts (GW) of electricity generation capacity that has been lost due to more than a decade of war in Syria.
Mehrabian told Syria’s Minister of Water Resources Tammam that Iran is preparing a second major line of credit to fund reconstruction projects in Syria which he said will mostly focus on electricity projects and power plants in the Arab country.
He said that Syria has some 6.5 GW of power generation capacity that is currently out of service because of the impacts of the war with militants.
The minister said Iran has already repaired two thermal power plants in Syria’s second largest city of Aleppo with a total capacity of 0.48 GW.
Mehrabian said he will soon travel to Syria to open two other new power plants that have been built by Iranian companies.
“Today, we are ready to offer our economic and technical capacities to Syria’s reconstruction,” he was quoted as saying in the meeting with Raad which took place in Iraq on the sidelines of a regional United Nations water conference.
The comments come days after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his ministers signed a series of major agreements with Syrian government officials in Damascus to expand trade and economic ties between the two countries.