TEHRAN – Some 23 water and electricity projects worth 6.86 trillion rials (about $163.33 million) were put into operation in four provinces through video conference.

Inaugurated in the 38th week of the Energy Ministry’s A-B-Iran Program by the Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian, the mentioned projects were put into operation in Zanjan, Qom, Isfahan, and Semnan provinces.

Of the mentioned projects, 20 were electricity projects and the other three were in the water sector.

The projects included desalination facilities, repair, and reconstruction of water transmission lines, a wastewater project, a water supply project, several electricity supply projects, three small-scale power plants, as well as several projects for improving the quality of the electricity network and reducing losses.

A-B-Iran program (the acronyms A and B stand for water and electricity in Persian) was initiated in the previous Iranian calendar year (ended on March 19, 2020), during which the minister made several trips to various provinces for inaugurating over 220 major projects with a total investment of 335.6 trillion rials (about $7.99 billion).

Since the beginning of the second phase of the scheme in the current Iranian calendar year (started on March 20, 2020), every week several energy projects have gone operational across the country.

According to Ardakanian, in the second phase of the program 250 projects were going to be inaugurated by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20) of which so far 227 have gone operational.

The official noted that a total of 500 trillion rials (about $11.9 billion) of investment will be made in the mentioned 250 projects.

Last week, Ardakanian inaugurated six electricity projects worth 2.4 trillion rials (about $57.14 million) in Kerman and Yazd provinces in the 37th week of the mentioned program.

EF/MA