As summer is just setting in, power load shedding across the country has reached critical proportion. If such a condition exists now what will happen in scorching months coming? In major cities, including provincial capitals of Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta, the outages span 15 to18 hours a day and in smaller cities and urban towns this duration goes beyond 20 hours. The country’s installed capacity of electricity production is a little more than 19,500 megawatt while actual generation of power from all sources is not more than 10,500 megawatt leaving a whooping shortage of around 8,500 MW. Of this 65 per cent of electricity is produced by fossil fuel, hydro-power accounts for 33 per cent and nuclear power only two per cent. There are four major power producers in the country: Water and Power Development Authority, Karachi Electric Supply Company, 19 independent power producers, and Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission.

Power load-shedding is decades old but its telling affect was really felt in 1997 when things started to deteriorate to become a shrieking crisis whose remedy could not be finds till today. Interestingly, power production was surplus in 1994-95 when the government of Benazir Bhutto pressed independent power producers into thermal power production and at a time India was believed to be interested in purchasing electricity from Pakistan.
When her government was dismissed, the succeeding government of Mr Nawaz Sharif focused mainly on taking on the IPPs, whose number was then 34, head-on rather than adding more power to the system. The intimidation and victimization of IPPs became so venomous that most of them opted out of the business. The IPPs exit also made an adverse impact on foreign direct investments to a degree that despite being a highly profitable sector no-one from the outside world is prepared to launch a power project in this country.

In fact, the crisis in electricity sector is owed largely to the Sharf’s first government approving a World Bank plan to corporate-ize WAPDA and divide it into generation, transmission and supply companies in 1990. The same government also accepted a similar World Bank plan for the Pakistan Railways and the people have witnessed how a utility like Railways has gone to the brinks of a total collapse. Making WAPDA’s three companies was actually undertaken by the Gen Musharraf’s dictatorial regime in 2005, although by then the regime had seen the destruction of the Pakistan Railways and should not have toyed with WAPDA with a plan which had already spelled a disaster.
What has markedly impacted the performance of WAPDA companies is that all the three of them failed to resolve their internal conflicts and its immediate net result was that the circular debt kept on rising by about Rs20 billion a month and has now reach a huge Rs280 billion. Another significant feature of the authority’s corporate-ization is that all the nine supply companies in the country witnessed a steep rise in line losses and generation and transmission companies in system losses. These losses touched an extraordinary rise up to 35 per cent of these losses while only five to 10 per cent is admissible worldwide. These losses are more than one-third of the total production which is more or less the size of the overall electricity shortfall. It goes without saying that power shortage has taken a heavy toll of the national life in the wake of closure of several industries, shrunk commercial activity and the country’s agricultural production goes dwindling. According to a conservative assessment, the daily national loss is at least Rs one billion a day, the upper limit of the losses can touch a half time more. No doubt, the caretaker administration must concentrate on the holding of the next parliamentary election, it is also obliged to make the day-to-day life easier for the people of the country. Since electricity shortage is undoubtedly the number one crisis in Pakistan, it has a definite role to play. It can at least ensure the system and line losses to come down substantially to ease life of the people. If all the supply companies must be given the task of lowering these losses by half, it would added at least 3,000 MW of electricity to the system without spending even a penny. Another step, the caretakers may take is to ensure the restoration of WAPDA’s central command by giving the chairman an authority to revive the board of members which was the pre-2005 position. It will certainly not be a new step as the outgoing federal government has already taken such a decision and the caretaker administration would only implement it in its letter and spirit. This step can at least ensure that the question of mounting circular debt is resolved significantly.

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