Lifeline power consumers: Govt working on a new subsidy

ISLAMABAD: The government is reportedly giving final touches to its subsidy design for millions of lifeline electricity consumers across the country through Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) to be placed before the Federal Cabinet for final nod, well-informed sources told Business Recorder.

Sharing the details, sources said Power Division in collaboration with the BISP has proposed to implement this Electricity Subsidy Program. This initiative aims to transform the untargeted electricity subsidy to targeted one which is to help the underprivileged domestic electricity consumers across Pakistan. BISP will support the Power Division in identifying and targeting eligible families that can benefit from the electricity subsidy.

BISP in consultation with the Power Division is determining the eligibility criteria for identifying potential consumers for the electricity subsidy programme.

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The Power Division will specify the number of unique subsidies to be provided. BISP will then screen families from its database that have reported having electric connections starting from PMT and continuing until a cut-off score is reached’ which will specify total number of subsidies to be given by the Power Division. BISP will continue to register families that have not registered with the registry.

The Power Division will coordinate with the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) for on boarding of the financial institutions/ banks for implementation of the subsidy and payment processing terms. This includes coordination with stakeholders covering all types of bill collection including Pakistan Post, Commercial Banks and Mobile Banking.

The Power Division will determine the number of families to be provided with the electricity subsidy. This information will be shared with BISP for the identification of potential eligible families for the subsidy program.

The Power Division through its technical resource will conduct a risk assessment of the subsidy design and will ensure placement of safeguards against risk areas.

The sources said BISP will use the National Socio Economic Registry (NSER) database to identify potential families based on the determined criteria and will share this information with the Power Division. The BISP will expose APIs for system level data integration.

According to sources, families not currently part of the NSER database will be mobilised for registration through 647 Dynamic Registration Centres (DRCs) established in every Tehsil across Pakistan.

Once the data of the potential eligible consumers is received from BISP, the Power Division will dispatch SMS messages co the identified families informing about their nomination for the subsidy program.

The consumer will visit the bank with the generated bill and will claim the subsidised payment. Biometric verification will be conducted to confirm the consumer’s identity. Once the identity is confirmed against the consumer’s CNIC, the representative of the financial institution will process the bill payment and adjust the subsidy amount accordingly.

Financial institutions and the Power Division will mutually agree on the periodicity for reconciling the collected subsidised bills.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024