Ministry of Water and Power has withdrawn its summary from the Economic Co-ordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet on privatisation of imported RLNG- fired power projects being established in Punjab in public sector, well -informed sources told Business Recorder.
The Ministry of Water and Power, sources said, has initiated Clean, Affordable and Reliable Energy (CARE) programme which is an integrated approach towards sustainable energy for Pakistan through import of RLNG for setting up of power plants. As per decision of the ECC, 3,600MW RLNG-based power plants will be located at Bhikki, Balloki and Haveli Bahadur Shah.
Out of these projects, the sources said, projects at Balloki and Haveli Bahadur Shah are being developed in the public sector through PSDP funding. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has already performed groundbreaking ceremonies of these two projects, 1230MW each in November 2016 and October 2015. The projects are scheduled to have open cycle operation in 2nd and 3rd quarters of this year and combined cycle operations in January 2018.
The projects at Balloki and Haveli Bahadur Shah are being implemented by National Power Park Management Company Limited, headed by the office of Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS) on massively lucrative perks and privileges which is wholly owned and controlled by the federal government and is being financed through Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP). The Ministry of Water and Power has claimed that the progress on both RLNG- fired projects is in advance stages.
According to sources, after initial setup and start-up of these plants under the public sector regime, they are planned to be ultimately operated in private sector to ensure their operation with best available efficiencies. Another key consideration for privatisation is to reduce the financial burden imposed upon the government by public enterprises and to release resources for utilisation on alternate urgent requirements. Based on this concept, the process of offloading these plants into private sector through a transparent and legal process is required to be initiated.
Privatisation Commission (PC) has been established with an exclusive mandate to implement the privatisation policy of the federal government and to provide for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto through a fair and transparent process to secure transactions of public sector entities privatisations. In order to ensure a high level of attention and benefit from the collective wisdom of the top level economic managers of the government, a Cabinet Committee on Privatisation (CCP) was created in 1991 to oversee the privatisation-related activities.
The ECC was informed in July last year that "in case of privatisation of Haveli Bahadur Shah and Balloki projects, the Privatisation Commission before discharging the responsibility under applicable laws, the ECC will review and adjust the risk allocation under the implementation agreement."
The sources said the Ministry of Water and Power proposed to the ECC on January 11, 2017 that in order to fast track the privatisation process of these projects, a committee comprising Chairman Privatisation Commission as chairman, secretaries of Water and Power, Finance, and Law and Justice Divisions as members may be constituted to support early completion of these transactions as per applicable privatisation law. However, the ministry withdrew the summary from the ECC on January 11, 2017 without citing any reason.