Pakistan water storage capacity that currently stands at merely nine per cent of average annual flows would further go down by 12 per cent over the next decade. Deputy Chairman Planning Commission, Dr Akram Sheikh while speaking at the Golden Jubilee Celebrations of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics said that country's current water storage capacity was very low as compared with the world average of 40 per cent. He said that on an average 35 million acres feet of water flows to the sea during the flood season. "Without additional capacity, the current storage will further go down by 12 per cent over the next decade', said the Deputy Chairman. Despite repeated rhetoric of building water reservoirs to cater for the future needs the Government so far remained unsuccessful to do something practical on the issue. It allocated an amount of Rs 40 billion to start construction work on five mega dams in June last. The National Economic Council approved the allocation. A total of $ 18 billion were required for all the five mega dams during the next nine years, an amount of two billion dollars each year. While fixing the amount of Rs 40 billion for initiating construction activities on Kalabagh Dam, Diamer-Basha Dam, Akhori Dam, Munda and Kurram Tangi Dams, the Government also put a condition to have consensus among the federating units to start the work whilst avoiding political controversy. President Pervez Musharraf had a plan to complete these dams not later than 2016 but the current pace (even to have consensus not to talk of completion of projects) depicts that it would not be possible to win the goal due to wastage of so many precious years even when everything was centralized in one personality during the last eight years. The use of freshwater for agriculture purposes is also very high, which according to Dr Sheikh is 90 per cent against the global use of 70 per cent. Pakistan had not managed its water resources with care and was on the top of the list of water stressed countries, with water availability of 1100 cubic meters per capita, he added. He said environment degradation was also aggravating the situation. Dr Sheikh said discharge of untreated industrial effluents had serious negative impact on the environment and human health through water borne toxins and diseases. The environment problems had emerged because of a combination of three factors namely, accelerating economic and demographic pressures, a limited resource base and inadequate institutions for the management of natural resources.