March 19, 2013 . 0

The outgoing PPP government has failed to tackle the loadshedding problem to the extent that the Planning Commission has projected shortages of electricity of 1544MW in 2019-20. The power shortage is supposed to average 4790 MW this fiscal, and reach 5528 MW in 2015-16, before going down, but not disappearing. The Planning Commission assumed that hydel, thermal, wind and nuclear projects, as well as gas imports from Iran and the Central Asian Republics are all completed on time. This was revealed in a news report appearing on Monday. In his farewell address, Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf admitted that the government had not overcome the energy crisis. It appears that the crisis will not just cover the entire tenure of the government to be elected this year, even if it completes its full five-year term, but extend well into the term of its successor. In other words, loadshedding is here for the foreseeable future. The shortage reflects that the demand for electricity will continue to grow, while the supply would not keep pace. This reflects the lack of planning by the present government, which seems to have failed to realize that electricity generation projects are of long gestation and require planning in advance.

The government should have put all possible power projects in motion. Instead, it used its tenure to place delays in the way of the Thar Coal Project and abandoned the Kalabagh Dam, which would provide a highly useful water reservoir, control floods and generate 4000MW of hydel. This pandering to foreign interests is not merely a case of cutting one’s nose to spite one’s face, but the government gave the consumer a parting kick by ending the subsidy on electricity. The only alternative to the subsidy is a backbreaking increase in the electricity tariff.

The Commission view of the situation for consumers is not hopeful. Not only will loadshedding continue, but tariffs are going to go up. Not only will this keep the consumer in darkness, but it will go on ruining the economy. The problem is perhaps too big for the caretaker government to handle, and it will be the duty of the government to be elected very soon to take the decisions now that will lead to an end to loadshedding in the future, which has already gone into the next decade, if the Planning Commission is to be believed.

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-ne...-in-the-future