June 24, 2007	Sunday	Jamadi-us-Sani 08, 1428

ISLAMABAD, June 23: The Water and Power Development Authority has suffered over Rs22.5billion losses due to improper contract management involving unjustified increase in bid price, excess and extra payments due to delayed projects and the dismal performance of its corporate entities.

Six out of 14 corporate entities of Wapda included National Transmission and Dispatch Company and Hyderabad, Multan, Peshawar, Quetta and Tribal Areas electric supply companies have incurred Rs21.072billion losses, states the Auditor-General of Pakistan’s report for the 2004-05 year presented before the National Assembly on Saturday.

“Although the remaining entities were profitable yet their combined profit could not offset the overall losses of the six companies,” said the report.

The Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly would take up the audit objections related to various departments and ministries in its meetings.

According to the auditor-general, after administrative restructuring in 1998, 14 corporate companies and residual power wing have been carved out of the Wapda’s power wing. Each company has started preparing its own financial statement.

But, no consolidated financial statement for the whole wing was prepared by the management, making it difficult to assess the overall financial health and performance of the power wing.

However, the profit and loss showed that in 2005 the NTDC suffered Rs1.8billion losses, Hesco Rs5.9billion, Mesco Rs514million, Pesco Rs6.367billion, Qesco Rs4.9billion and Tesco Rs1.685billion.

According to the report, most of the corporate entities were facing liquidity crisis.

The companies were unable to meet cash requirement and heavy amounts of cash had to be injected by Wapda or the government.

Distribution losses due to leakage resulted in heavy loss of revenue to distribution companies (Discos). But such losses were not disclosed in the financial statements.