LAHORE: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President and incoming Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif Wednesday said that revival of national economy and attracting investment in power projects for overcoming power loadshedding problem would be the top most priority of the new government.
While addressing a consultative meeting on energy crisis on Wednesday, Nawaz said the new government would make sincere efforts to tackle electricity loadshedding problem by taking immediate, short-term, medium-term and long-term measures while efforts will be made to check line losses and power theft apart from holding accountable to inefficient and corrupt elements.
He said every step will be taken to provide relief to the common man and there will be an end to unscheduled power outages soon after taking charge by the new government. Nawaz held out an assurance that all available resources would be utilised to overcome loadshedding to provide relief to the people. However, he said no development fund will be reduced and steps will be taken to provide relief to the common man through other means,
The meeting discussed ways to increase power generation through various means to overcome power loadshedding problem. It also discussed reports of energy experts and decided to concentrate on finding permanent solution to this problem. Among others the meeting was attended by Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Senator Ishaq Dar, Khawaja Mohammad Asif, Sartaj Aziz, Ahsan Iqbal, Senator Parvaiz Rasheed, Shaukat Tareen, Mian Mansha and energy experts.
Sources claimed that the meeting emphasised the need for encouraging local and foreign investors for investment in the energy sector because there was virtually no progress in attracting investment in the energy sector, especially in hydel or coal based projects in the past. Nevertheless, large-scale investment in the energy sector can create thousands of new jobs and contribute to social, educational, economic and industrial development. It was decided that investors in China, Turkey and other countries would be invited for investment in power sector.
The meeting was also informed that the annual cost of loadshedding was estimated in 2010 at Rs 500 billion ($5 billion), a loss of a million jobs and at least $2.8 billion reduction in exports. It was noted that the previous government had almost doubled electricity prices to eliminate subsidies but because of the poor governance and inability to improve the efficiency of the energy sector, the losses have actually increased and the energy crisis has become more serious. Production, transmission and distribution losses have increased and the distribution companies have been unable to recover their full dues (arrears estimated at Rs 499 billion in 2012) or reduce theft of electricity. This has led to a chronic so-called 'circular debt problem' of Rs 500 billion in 2012.
The sources claimed that in the meeting it was stressed to modernise existing thermal units to improve their generating capacity which was possible at relatively low cost. The sources further claimed that the meeting decided to resolve the issue of circular debt by generating resources in order to enhance electricity production in the country to reduce gap between the demand and supply.
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