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Tuesday March 19, 2024

The truth about power

By Editorial Board
June 19, 2018

The electricity crisis in the country has hit a peak once again. In his last days in power, former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi had claimed that the PML-N had fulfilled its promise of solving the electricity crisis – and that if the situation deteriorated that would be someone else’s responsibility. This did not correspond much to facts. With the PML-N government gone, the power division, much like the finance ministry, has turned on the hand that used to feed it. In a presentation to the Senate last week, the secretary for power blamed the ‘absence of political will’ and a ‘governance problem’ for the power crisis. The power division essentially reported a bleak picture. There was no change in demand, supply or shortages last year. Electricity losses increased as did receivables. This version of the power crisis would suggest that the previous government did little to improve electricity supply and made the power sector more financially vulnerable. This is a picture that is based on facts, which show an increase in receivables from around Rs589 billion in 2015 to Rs779 billion in 2018. Similarly, circular debt in the power sector has only ballooned with no effective strategy created to bring it in check.

There also seems to have been a case of selective truth from the power division. The power secretary reported shortages of 4,500MW, which is 50 percent higher than the highest shortages it reported to the media when the previous government was in power. It is likely that the PML-N will respond with a claim of politicisation. Moreover, one could legitimately ask which of the figures from the power division are more trustworthy. The ones it shared without any public protest while the PML-N was in power? Or the ones it is sharing now? In some ways, a closer examination of affairs shows how poorly the power sector has been treated. If we take government sector receivables alone, the Sindh government requested – and was granted – a Rs50 billion write-off in 2016. This is a deeply questionable practice that only makes the malaise in a troubled sector worse. Electricity supply is a political matter, but the sector should not be crippled in service of private political interests. There is no excuse for why provincial or federal governments are being granted write-offs in what they owe to the power sector. One senator seemed to feel that leasing out feeders to local contractors could solve the problem of electricity theft – but how will these contractors be able to collect what the government owes? While there are certainly questionable decisions that have been taken at a government level, there are questionable practices at the corporate level inside Discos, Gencos and IPPs that continue to be ignored when analysing the power crisis in the country.