Defending the Indefensible

Federal Minister for Water and Power, Khwaja Asif, vociferously defended his Ministry's' performance during a question-hour in the National Assembly and gave a shut-up call to his predecessor Naveed Qamar from the PPP by challenging the Ministry's performance during the tenure of the PPP-led coalition government from 2008-13. Asif would have been better advised to defend his own record, nearly two years into his appointment as the Minister - a time period considered sufficient to make a difference, given that it is defined as short to medium term - rather than launching a counter attack against a party that lost the general elections to the PML-N mainly because of its appalling performance with respect to the energy crisis, or so it is widely believed.
What is extremely unfortunate is, that the performance of the Ministry of Water and Power during the incumbent government has not improved markedly from what was evident during the PPP's tenure. Load shedding of comparable hours continues to plague the productive as well as the household sectors. To add insult to injury, the policies to deal with the crisis have also not markedly varied since 2008, even though a major input for generation namely fuel witnessed a massive reduction in its international price in 2014 and the first quarter of 2015. The PML(N) government continues with the past practice of manipulating demand to show lower than actual shortage and has done little if anything to improve generation capacity due to a paucity of funds which accounts for the Ministry of Finance's decision to cut the federal PSDP by 9 percent.
Circular debt continues to create severe liquidity issues for the sector and the Ministry of Finance is compelled to periodically extend bailout packages to the Pakistan State Oil to enable it to open letters of credit. The transmission and distribution losses remain high and the focus is on borrowing from abroad, notably China, to set up generation plants with the terms of the agreements not made public leading to speculation that all is not kosher and at the end of the day would imply higher cost per unit to consumers. What is a further source of concern is the fact that an LNG purchase agreement must have been signed with Qatar if the first shipment is expected by the end of the current month as revealed by the Minister of Petroleum. However, its details would, it has been reported, be announced by Ogra. The rationale given is that Ogra would make the pricing deal with IPPs, and has reportedly already done so.
The Minister during parliament's question-hour made a rather surprising revelation that "we are supplying 100 percent electricity to the industries due to 100 percent recovery". This claim is easily refuted given the fact that the growth rate of the manufacturing sector (July-November 2014) for which data is available was no more than 2.5 percent compared to 6 percent in the comparable period of the year before - a decline mainly attributable to high level of load shedding and gas shortages. While part of the reason may have been the taxes imposed on specific industries, yet the growth rate of overall exports has also declined with the relevant industries citing load shedding and gas shortages as the reason for their inability to produce at capacity. Exports have risen for the textile sector mainly due to the grant of GSP plus status to Pakistan by the European Union which account for total exports remaining stagnant.
However, the minister was correct in claiming that 101 feeders across the country are facing 90 percent loss due to woefully poor receivable position. He then lambasted the "thieves" who come out in violent protests against load shedding. But inexplicably he did not explain the reason why receivables from the private sector have increased during the incumbent government's tenure compared to the tenure of the PPP-led coalition government. He also did not mention the failure of the government to convince provincial governments to a federal adjustor to ensure that the receivables from governments/autonomous bodies are zero.
To conclude, Khwaja Asif has taken no measures that would improve governance within his Ministry and according to reports has informed the Prime Minister that the reason is that all decisions pertaining to his Ministry are being taken in Punjab. If this is indeed true, then he needs to resign without any further loss of time.