Power tariff goes high by 10 to 15pc

ISLAMABAD: The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet on Wednesday gave approval to increase power tariff in the range of 10 to 15 percent, however domestic power consumers using up to 300 units and industrial/commercial consumers using less than five kilowatts would be exempted of this increase.

In industrial sector, however the tariff has been increased up to 20 percent for consumers using electricity more than 5KWhs.

For agriculture sector no increase was sanctioned, and decided that tariff of Rs5.5/unit would continue as the sector is the mainstay of the economy.

Finance Ministry has not made the decision public on the directives of the Finance Minister Asad Umar who chaired the ECC meeting. The minister directed that it would be the Federal Cabinet that meeting on Thursday (today) with Prime Minister Imran Khan in the chair would take the final decision on it.

The official who attended the meeting informed The News that the minister said during the meeting that as 70 percent of the population is consuming electricity less than 300 units a month, its tariff has not been increased. However, he authenticated the reports that ECC had given approval to 10 percent increase in tariff for households consuming 300 to 700 units, and 15 percent increase for those consuming more than 700 units/month.

Official said that minister said during the meeting that hike in tariff would help in curtailing the ballooning power sector circular debt and at the same time they would devise aggressive plan for increasing the recoveries from the consumers.

So far, in its two-month tenure, the PTI government postponed the decision several times, despite the summary for increase in tariff was tabled to ECC. However, each time after meetings of the committee, the ministers said that the increase was ‘inevitable’. And now, the decision was taken, but made it conditional with the federal cabinet’s approval, as the ECC decision would be tabled before the Cabinet on Thursday.

Official confirmed to The News that in absolute terms, the increase of Rs1.18/unit has been approved for 301 to 700 units’ consumers. However, he did not give the figure for consumers of using more than 700 units.

It is worth mentioning that the Ministry of Energy (Power Division) has proposed to the government Rs3.2/unit increase for domestic consumers with monthly consumption of 300 to 700 units. It had also recommended 26 percent increase for bracket of 100 to 300 units consumers.

It recommended no increase for less than 50 units, but an increase of 0.87/unit up to 100 units, Rs1.22 per unit for up to 200 units, Rs2.04 per unit for consumers up to 300 units and above.