The Nepra chief advised the parliamentary committee to seek yearly comparison of figures as half-yearly data could be misleading. He said that all but Islamabad, Gujranwala, Faisalabad and Lahore electricity companies were facing massive losses and said the regulator approved higher loss benchmarks to avoid bankruptcy of Discos. - File photo

ISLAMABAD: With the difference between cost and sale price of electricity widening to Rs3.29 per unit (kwh), the National Assembly’s Special Committee on Energy Crisis and government institutions assisting it for more than two and a half months failed on Tuesday to suggest ways of addressing the problem.

A meeting of the 17-member committee presided over by Usman Khan Taraki criticised the ministry of water and power for not providing sufficient information and for its lethargic attitude in reducing the tariff differential and said it could cause further deterioration in the country’s fragile financial position.

But the seriousness of the committee in handling the matter was evident from the fact that only three of its members – Bushra Gohar of the ANP, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi of the PML-N and Rana Farooq Saeed Khan of the PPP – attended the meeting. And PPP’s Mohammad Jadam Mangrio left the session soon after it had started.

Mr Abbasi, who regularly attends the committee’s meetings, expressed dissatisfaction over its work. He told the meeting that the ministry of water and power had not been able so far to identify the problem and had not come up with facts to suggest if the crisis was of management, financial or capacity in nature. “Under the present circumstances, the government has no solution (to the power crisis) till 2015,” he said.

The committee expressed concern over failure of power distribution companies (Discos) to collect Rs63 billion power bills and theft of electricity worth Rs38 billion during the last fiscal year.

Bushra Gohar said she was concerned to note that the government lacked the will to end inefficiency, mismanagement and corruption in the system despite the fact that it had a large number of departments and human resources. “There is no commitment and plan from the government to resolve the crisis,” she added.

Water and Power Secretary Imtiaz Kazi proposed to hold a separate meeting of government officials and some members of the committee to draft final recommendations. Chairman Taraki rejected the suggestion and said the committee would finalise recommendations after its open meetings.

Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said the ministry had not provided answers to even simple questions raised by the committee in its previous meeting about annual losses because of theft.

“How a ministry that does not have even basic numbers could guide the minister or the prime minister to take important decisions to resolve the power crisis,” he said.

Secretary Imtiaz Kazi said it was because of constantly changing difference in sale and purchase prices. He said steps were being taken to ensure authenticity of figures.

Power Minister Syed Naveed Qamar said the government was inducting professional management in distribution companies, but said that parliamentarians also were part of the problem in influencing postings and transfers. “Every MNA wants to have his own XEN and SDO in his constituency” and hence the system was not being run on merit.

Chairman of the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) Khalid Saeed said the determined average sale tariff was Rs11.07 per kWh for the current financial year, but the tariff notified by the government stood at Rs7.78 per unit, creating a tariff differential of Rs3.29 per kWh.

During the last fiscal year, he said, Nepra had determined an average tariff of Rs9.58 and the notified rate was Rs7.78 per unit with a differential of Rs1.80. That meant that the differential had increased by about 83 per cent to Rs3.29 per unit in a year.

Chief Operation Officer of Central Power Purchasing Agency (CPPA) Arshad Raza said the National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC) purchased 90,481 million units last year for Rs639.6 billion at an average rate of Rs7.07 per unit. But it sold 87,782 million units at a billed amount of Rs659.06 billion at an average rate of Rs7.51 per unit to Discos and the Karachi Electric Supply Company.Answering a question, the CPPA chief said his agency’s dispatch losses stood at 3 per cent against the Nepra-approved benchmark of 2.5 per cent. He said the NTDC suffered a revenue loss of Rs18 billion because of the 3 per cent losses.

NTDC Managing Director Rasul Khan Mehsud disclosed that his company’s losses were in fact 3.8 per cent determined by recently installed meters and said the previous electricity dispatches were taking place without metering.

The CPPA chief said the overall transmission losses of Discos stood at 19 per cent against a permissible limit of 16 per cent fixed by the regulator. This meant Discos were losing over Rs115 billion per annum.

The Nepra chief advised the parliamentary committee to seek yearly comparison of figures as half-yearly data could be misleading. He said that all but Islamabad, Gujranwala, Faisalabad and Lahore electricity companies were facing massive losses and said the regulator approved higher loss benchmarks to avoid bankruptcy of Discos.

He termed the line losses and theft major problems and said the electric supply companies of Peshawar, Hyderabad, Sialkot, Multan and Quetta were billing for only 65 per cent of the power supplied and managed to collect only 60 per cent of the billed amount.