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Friday March 29, 2024

Increased power installed capacity has no impact on loadshedding

By Israr Khan
May 26, 2017

ISLAMABAD: The government has increased power plants installed capacity, but power generation has dropped compared to last year leading to prolonged and unscheduled loadshedding, the Economic Survey 2016/17 revealed.

The survey says that installed power capacity has been increased to 25.1 million Megawatt (MW) in 2017 from 22.9 million MW during last year; however, power generation has declined and remained 85,206 GW/h during July-March 2016/17 compared to 101,970 GW/h during same period of the last year.

Regarding consumption pattern, there is no significant change in the consumption pattern of electricity. However, during July March financial year 2017, the share of household in electricity consumption has been increased which is indicating that economy growth has switched generate public to use of advanced technology.

The government has given priority to industrial sector, thus there was uninterrupted power supply to industrial sector. However, little decline in share of industry in electricity consumption is due to the use of own captive power plants on LNG by large industrial units.

The increase in share of agriculture in electricity consumption is positive sign that farmer are getting electricity for farm mechanization which will in turn have spill over effect on the economy as whole Economic Survey revealed.

The electricity consumption by household increased from 46 to 50 per cent, commercial 7 to 8 per cent and agriculture sector 9 to 10 per cent compared to corresponding period July March 2016.However, consumption of electricity in industry dropped from 27 to 26 per cent compared to corresponding period last year. 

During the period under review, power sector has shown significant improvement as recovery from end consumers reached 94.40 per cent being highest in last ten years while transmission and distribution losses declined to 16.3 per cent.

The government has brought down subsidies and significantly contained the accumulation of new payable arrears in the power sector by improving performance of power distribution companies (Discos), rationalizing tariff and reducing delays in tariff determination.

The subsidy of power sector stood at Rs 464 billion accounting for 2.3 per cent of GDP in financial year 2012 that had been consistently reduced to Rs 217 billion, 0.7 per cent of GDP in financial year 2016.

National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) issued one distribution license and 23 generation licenses with installed capacity of 6296 MW were issued. Also six generation licenses were cancelled and two licenses were revoked during the period under review. The Private Power and Infrastructure Board (PPIB) managed to induct 31 IPPs with 9071 MW and attracted an investment of around US$9.4 billion. Four solar projects with accumulative capacity of 400 MW are operational. Out of four, three were completed in August 2016.