PHC restrains Pesco from charging higher tariff from KP textile industry

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Monday restrained the Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) from charging the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa textile industry higher tariff rates and directed it to issue revised bills to the mills at the reduced tariff.

A two-member bench comprising Justice Ijaz Anwar and Justice Waqar Ahmad allowed interim relief to the KP Textile Mills. It directed the Pesco to revise the July monthly electricity bills as per notification no. SRO 12(1)/2019 issued on January 1, 2019, at the reduced rates of 7.5 cents/kWh.

The court also issued a notice to Pesco and National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) to submit para-wise comments before the next hearing of the case. They were asked to explain as to why the SRO 12(1)/2019 issued on January 1, 2019, was not followed under which the federal government reduced electricity rates to the KP Industrial Units to 7.5 cents/kWh.

The court issued the order in a writ petition filed by 11 textile mills across the province including Sarhad Textile Mills Limited and others. During the arguments, Qazi Ghulam Dastagir, counsel for the petitioners submitted that the textile sector is the backbone of our country and this has been true not only about creating job opportunities within Pakistan ranging from agriculture (cotton) but also the processing and finishing industries.

Furthermore, he argued, the textile industry also earns precious foreign exchange for the country. In addition to that, the textile sector single-handedly earns more than half of the foreign exchange for the country and has been providing almost 50 percent of total jobs to the people of Pakistan either directly or indirectly.

However, he added during the past few years due to the huge mismanagement in the energy sector such as electricity and gas sector had to face constant and arbitrary increases in the tariffs, which being the primary raw material into the manufacturing process almost costs around fifty percent of the total manufacturing costs.

Resultantly, he said, in spite of having the status of GSP Plus country (which grants Pakistan a comparative lesser customs tariffs for the importing countries viz-a-viz the competing textiles exporting countries to the destination countries under the WTO regime) Pakistan has been facing a decline in the textile exports.

To revive the textile industry, he argued, the federal government issued regular tariff notifications for all the DISCOs bearing SRO No.01 to 10 of 2009 for their entire regular consumer categories including other Industrial categories were also issued which were subsequently adjusted/updated through different SRO’s as well.

However, he said, under the concessionary/beneficial notification SRO 12(1)/2019 dated 01-01-2019 and notification SRO No.11 (I)/2019 the federal government notified the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the payment of tariff differential subsidy.

He submitted that the concession rates under the notification continued till June 2019 and surprisingly the respondents without withdrawing the concession rates introduced by the federal government acting illegally and unlawfully had billed them at higher and inflated rates in July 2019, while including their in certain quarterly adjustments.

It said that the petitioners after receiving at inflated electricity bills issued in violation of above-referred notification approached the respondent distribution companies seeking downward correction of their bills, however, the respondent Pesco flatly refused the downward corrections of the bills as per above-mentioned notification without assigning any reasons.

He argued that the petitioners are entitled to be billed or the consumed for the current billing month of July 2019 at the reduced rate up to 7.5/kWh and the charging of excess amount included in the monthly bills is illegal.