ISLAMABAD: The Ministry of Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety (MPA&SS) has decided to extend subsidy directly to the protected domestic consumers of electricity through E-vouchers, well-informed sources told Business Recorder.
In a letter to Secretary Finance, Deputy Director, (Policy) MPA&SS referred to a letter of Benazir Income Support Fund (BISP) dated September 18, 2024 on direct subsidy distribution to protected electricity consumers.
According to him, during the meeting following decisions were undertaken:
(i) BISP will be responsible for sharing the PMT based data with Power Division for further processing;
(ii) Power Division/Discos through registered Mobile Numbers to be verified from Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), will issue E-voucher to relevant consumers;
(iii) State Bank of Pakistan will be required to engage all the banks for the development of the system to collect the E-Voucher along with electricity bills.
Subsidy package for those consuming up to 200 units announced
Ministry of Finance may assist in approaching SBP for an early engagement of banks to implement the scheme; and
(iv) data matching (based on PMT score provided by BISP) may be carried out by Power Division/DISCOs and BISP.
MPA&SS has proposed the following procedure to extend direct subsidy:
(i) 20 million families having electricity connections with PMT to be determined by Government will be issued E-vouchers by Power Division/DISCOs;
(ii) these families within jurisdiction of relevant DISCOs will approach bill collection points including financial institutions, with bill and E-Voucher;
(iii) bill collection points will add meter reference number and CNIC to verify subsidy through system and update backend data automatically;
(iv) the application programming interfaces developed through Power Division/PITC will automatically match consumption with BISP PMT and exclude non-deserving consumers from the list based on consumption data;
(v) recovery for one month from those who may be found as un-entitled would be adjusted in subsequent bill; (vi) those who claim to be deserving but not included would have the option of approaching NSER desks for registration and updating consumer number for inclusion in next generation of E-vouchers; and
(vii) it has been proposed that one family would get one benefit while currently there is a possibility that one family may be getting multiple meters and thus multiple subsidies.
The Ministry of Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety has requested BISP, Power Division and Finance Division to execute the decision taken in the meeting under intimation to it for placing it on Task Management System (TMS) of Prime Minister Portal as Ministry of Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety is a leading Ministry for this task.
The government assured International Monetary Fund (IMF) it will undertake targeted subsidy reforms and replace cross-subsidies to households with direct and targeted BISP support.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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