(January 21, 2006) China’s largest independent power producer, run by the son of Three Gorges dam champion Li Peng, will take a 3 per cent stake in China Three Gorges Power Co Ltd, Huaneng said on its Web site.

Hong Kong: China’s largest independent power producer, Huaneng Power International Inc, says it will invest 253.57 million yuan (US$30.62 million) in China’s controversial Three Gorges Dam project, the world’s biggest hydroelectric project. Huaneng will take a three percent stake in the planned China Three Gorges Power Co Ltd, Huaneng said on its Website. It said China Yangtze Three Gorges Project Development Corp, which currently runs the Three Gorges Dam project, would own 90 percent of the share capital of China Three Gorges Power by contributing the net assets of its Gezhouba Hydropower Plant. The project has been criticised at home and abroad for its environmental impact and displacement of well over a million people. Construction of the dam, expected to cost 204 billion yuan, began in 1993 and is scheduled for completion in 2009. In March, officials from China Yangtze Three Gorges Project Development Corp said it planned to set up a shareholding vehicle with power generating assets worth seven or eight billion yuan in the second half of this year for a share listing in China, and possibly overseas as well. They said Chinese and Hong Kong firms, including a unit of utility CLP Holdings, Huaneng and China-backed conglomerate CITIC Pacific, were interested in taking a combined 10 percent in the unit before its initial public offering. However, on Sunday, Hong Kong’s Sing Tao Daily quoted a CLP spokesman as saying CLP had decided to shelve its plan to invest in the project. The paper said the deadline to express an intention to invest in China Three Gorges Power was the end of this month but so far only Huaneng had done so.

Reuters news agency, January 21, 2006