Country’s installed electricity capacity increases by 30pc to 29,573MW

ISLAMABAD: Economic Survey 2017-18 unfolds that Pakistan’s installed capacity to generate electricity has surged up to 29,573MW by February 2018 which stood at 22,812MW in June 2013, showing the growth of 30 percent.

As far as the transmission and distribution losses are concerned, the Economic Survey says average losses were at 18.9 percent in 2013 which have now reduced to 17.9 percent in 2018 showing the government has succeeded to reduce the losses by 1 percent.

The recovery of the billed amount of electricity sold to the consumers stood at 89.6 percent. During the period from 2013 to 2018, as many as 39 projects with cumulative capacity of 12,230MW have been added. Due to significant improvement in the energy mix, the country’s reliance on expensive oil has been reduced.

The better energy supply has helped large scale manufacturing (LSM) and in turn manufacturing to both grew above 6 percent in FY 2017-18, which is an 11-year high. In power sector, per capita electricity consumption is considered one of the most important economic welfare indicator regarding availability of affordable energy. Pakistan is bestowed with enormous hydro and coal potential which, if carefully exploited, can ensure our future energy security on long-term basis. Further, the expansion in generation capacity requires supporting expansion in the transmission infrastructure for evacuation of the power.

China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is another major breakthrough in the development of the country’s energy sector, under which financial outlay of around $35 billion has been made for energy sector projects including power generation and transmission projects to be implemented in IPP mode. In case of natural gas, the gap between demand and supply was widening due to increase in gas demand and depletion of existing sources.

The government has made efforts to exploit indigenous resources as well as import gas though transnational pipelines and LNG to mitigate the shortfall. Indigenous crude oil meets only 15 percent of the country’s total requirements, while 85 percent requirements are met through imports of crude oil and refined petroleum products. The indigenous and imported crude is refined by six major and two small refineries. The present government not only made concerted efforts for upgradation of existing refineries, but also made addition of six depots with inland freight equalisation margin. Further, to promote fuel efficiency, the government has introduced marketing of 92 RON premier motor gasoline replacing the existing 87 RON PMG under the regulated environment.

Pakistan has large indigenous coal reserves estimated at over 186 billion tons which are sufficient to meet the energy requirements of the country on long-term basis. There has been significant increase in import of coal due to commissioning of new coal based power plants at Sahiwal and Port Qasim.