Farkhund Yousafzai
Islamabad, 13 August 2024 (TDI): Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday said that the government is focused on providing low-cost electricity as it is necessary to steer the country out of prevailing crisis, besides bringing reforms to achieve economic stability.
“Our sole focus is to reduce power rates to give relief to domestic consumers, industry, agriculture, exports, and business sectors. This is inevitable to steer the economy of the current issues. The exports’ competitiveness is linked with low-cost electricity,” the prime minister said addressing the newly appointed chairmen and board members of the power distribution companies (Discos).
The statement comes as the government faces criticism for approving a massive increase in the power tariffs in line with the International Monetary Funds’ (IMF) conditions.
In July, the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) approved the federal government’s request to increase base tariff by up to Rs7.12 per unit for domestic consumers.
The base tariff was increased for domestic consumers up to 48.84 rupees per unit excluding taxes.
However, domestic consumers using up to two hundred units per month were given exemption from the recent increase for three months from July to September 2024.
PM terms low-cost electricity and efficient power transmission system major factors for stable economy
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— Geo English (@geonews_english) August 13, 2024
The prime minister also called low-cost electricity and efficient power transmission system the main factors for a stable economy, adding that the Special Investment Facilitation Council was focused on achieving the said targets.
He told the meeting that the government would publicly appreciate the Discos members and heads who would put in their maximum efforts to bring improvements, but those failing to do so would not be spared.
The prime minister said through a lengthy process, the government had appointed experienced and highly competent l people in Discos purely on merit by doing away with political appointees.
He said the newly appointed heads and members had great challenges ahead which required working hard day and night to purge the Discos of corruption and mismanagement.
He said the power theft had swelled to around annual 500 billion rupees mainly due to connivance with the Discos staffers who were also the reason behind destroying the institutions.
He said that the circular debt had touched 2,300 billion rupees– almost one-third of the country’s total receipts of 9 trillion rupees last year. Can a state be run with such a huge burden?” he questioned.
Also highlighting the problems of line losses and weak transmission systems, he instructed the immediate launch of smart metering in some of the Discos.
