Pakistan’s energy planners and managers, industry representatives and energy specialists analysed the government’s performance in power sector at an Institute of Policy Studies’ seminar and said that Pakistan’s energy crisis could possibly be controlled by early 2018 if all the implementation schedules of the 2013 energy policy strategic framework were duly met.
Such occurrence, however, would still be a temporary solution as the government’s most measures lack far-sighted all-round approach which was critical for good governance and institutional growth and performance, they viewed.
The seminar titled “Government’s Performance in Power Sector: A Mid-Term Review” held on Wednesday was addressed mainly by Ashfaq Mahmood, former secretary water and power, Syed Akhtar Ali, member (energy), planning commission of Pakistan, Abu Bakar Madni, additional secretary department of energy, government of Sindh.
The programme was chaired by Mirza Hamid Hasan, former secretary water and power and chairman, who is also member of IPS-National Academic Council and chairman of its ‘Tawanai’ (energy) programme. A number of stakeholders, government officials and experts attended the seminar.
Ashfaq Mahmood critically evaluated the government’s performance in comparison with its strategic framework in 2013 policy in detail. He said while the government’s primary target was the elimination of load shedding, its policies were also inclusive of other important areas such as power generation, distribution, theft control, revenue collection, transparency, accountability and customer care. While the government was somewhat successful in reducing load shedding, it could not find a sustainable resolve unless it pays heed to other mentioned areas as well, he opined.
For achieving the target of eliminating load shedding by 2017, the present government had aimed at improving the performance of existing GENCOs, however, it was still abysmal. A report issued by the NEPRA claimed that the efficiencies of generation plants in public sector had declined by 11 percent to 36 percent of their design efficiencies and distribution losses were in the range of 9.47 per cent to 33.40 per cent of the electricity received, he informed.
None of the DISCOs met the target set by NEPRA in 2013-14 while in some of the better rated DISCOs, namely FESCO, GEPCO, LESCO and IESCO, the losses even showed increase over the previous year in sharp contrast to NEPRA’s requirement to reduce losses, he added.
