The Council of Common Interests (CCI), which met with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the chair on Wednesday, approved National Power Policy 2013-18, but deadlock still persisted on deduction of provincial electricity dues from divisible pool through Federal Adjuster after a passage of 60 days.
-- Deadlock still persists over deduction of dues
-- Issue of Federal Adjuster deferred for one month
The policy was unveiled by Minister for Water and Power Khawaja Muhammad Asif, Prime Minister's Special Assistant on Energy, Dr Mussadiq Malik, Minister of State for Water and Power, Abid Sher Ali and Additional Secretary Incharge, Saif Chattha. The main thrust of the power policy is to rationalise energy mix and furnace oil-fuelled expensive electricity should be substituted with coal-fired electricity, so that the rising electricity prices could be contained or significantly lowered. Pakistan's energy mix was in favour of hydle generation 20 years ago, but now it is on top of those countries which generate electricity from furnace oil.
"We will change the energy mix in three to five years in a way that electricity prices can be maintained at an affordable level and loadshedding be eliminated through gradual increase in generation by using cheap fuel. We want to increase generation at a pace which will be two steps ahead of demand so that the country could not face loadshedding again," he added.
Prime Minister's Special Assistant on Energy Dr Musadik Malik said that supply-demand gap would be eliminated. He said the country would build infrastructure on the pattern of Singapore and other countries. 'Coal corridors', 'energy cities' and 'industrial corridors' were being established to attract investors. The government is unable to invest $7-8 billion from its own resources to generate 5000 MW electricity that's why it is wooing investors. However, the government will develop infrastructure so that investors come and plug in gaps without any hurdle, according to him.
Khawaja Asif said, if technical aspects of losses were pulled out of the entire basket, then theft and tariff were the circular debt in real sense of the word. "CCI has deferred the issue of Federal Adjuster for one month as the provinces did not agree with the proposed mechanism. Ministry of Water and Power and representatives of three provinces, ie, KPK, Sindh and Balochistan will take a collective decision and the issue will be brought back to the CCI if they feel so," Asif added.
Replying to a question, Asif said provincial governments had raised some points in the previous meeting of the CCI. He said provinces were facing different issues. "For instance, transmission system in Balochistan is not of high-quality and full electricity cannot be given to the province even if the government intends to supply it. The government will import more electricity from Iran for Balochistan. Likewise, electricity system in KPK is destroyed and one of the key grid stations called Muhammadi grid station is functional 50 percent as it was destroyed by terrorists. This station will be fully functional very soon," he said. He said the potential of hydel generation in KPK was substantial and the KPK government intended to establish hydel power plants. He said, the federal government would facilitate the provincial government in this regard. He said, Sindh had huge Thar coal reservoirs which could be used for thermal power.