The government has now made it clear that the public will have to buy expensive electricity from independent power plants in any case until the agreements made by the Muslim League (N) and the People’s Party in different eras are terminated.
In this regard, Federal minister for Energy Owais Leghari has explained that the government has no intention to terminate the contracts with these IPPs (Independent Power Plants). Although people are protesting against this expensive electricity all over the country. Speaking on a private TV program Owais Leghari said that they cannot unilaterally terminate contracts with IPPs and pay fines of $900 million like Ricodic. He said that capacity payments can be negotiated with IPPs, if the US dollar had been at the rate of 2015, the capacity payments would have been 800 billion rupees instead of 2100 billion rupees. Debt re profiling has been discussed, Chinese power plants have also been discussed to shift to local coal, this can reduce by two and a half rupees per unit and loans of 8.5 billion dollars have been taken in the power sector at high interest rates. So the benefit of loan re profiling will be passed on to the consumers.
It is clear from the above discussion that the Minister of Energy has once again come to be a child comforter and he has no concrete program to overcome the crisis. On the other hand a new rumor has been left that there is a possibility of starting a competitive wholesale electricity market in the country. Today, the CPP will hold a public hearing in this regard in which the final test run and the market commercial code, as a market operator, CPP on 24 issues. The AG will submit that CTBMC’s commercial market operator operation of debt co-declaration.
At a time when power tariffs are increasing due to inefficiency and bad governance and mismanagement, IPPs on all types of consumers. Agreements with cross-buddies and tariffs have left the country in limbo. However, a ray of light appears to be the implementation of a competitive wholesale electricity market, CTBCM, which is a difficult change in the current rotten system.
Under this competitive system, there will be a large number of buyers and sellers of electricity, but buyers will have to pay the cost of electricity transmission and distribution. The government owns the massive investment in the energy sector and owns the power plants while monopolizing the entire infrastructure through the DISCOs. Consumers have no choice but to buy electricity, hence the new competitive market.
Under the system consumers will be able to purchase electricity from private suppliers and traders as well. Nepra will decide the electricity rates on the basis of bilateral consensus and wheeling charges on distribution and transmission will also be decided by Nepra, for which Nepra is organizing a public hearing. In the last 2 years, less than 50% of the production of IPPs based on 23 thousand 400 MW was used. In this regard, former Nagar Energy Minister Gohra Ijaz said that IPPs power plants based on imported coal of 5 thousand MW have been constructed. Utilized less than 25% of capacity in 2 years, running at 25% less capacity yet charging full capacity charges i.e. Rs 692 billion, wind operations less than 50% but with additional charges of Rs 175 billion per unit while 180 billion rupees are being given to RLNG despite running at 50% less capacity.
He said that if this is not a national tragedy, then what else is it? It should be noted that no country-loving person will defend the contracts of IPPs. He added that the country cannot move forward until the contracts with the IPPs are revised, at these electricity rates. Industry can’t run, domestic consumers can’t pay bills, who is responsible for paying 2000 billion annually to closed power plants should be told to the nation. Instead of paying, the money should be collected from the political parties and administrative officers due to which there is an additional burden on the nation and the best way to do this is to cut government expenditure and abolish free electricity units. If the government will not take practical measures in this regard, then other political parties can also take the path of protest like Jamaat-e-Islami.
