One by one reports coming out of the power sector are chipping away at the story the government sought to tell: that it will move vigorously to increase generation and streamline distribution to eventually end load-shedding in the country. That goal seems like a mirage today.

Now we have news that at least four separate power plants are experiencing forced outages, taking more than 2000MW off the grid just as the summer months set in and the dams lie empty.

These are days when thermal power generation is needed the most because temperatures increase and hydel generation is not available since river flows have not begun to rise.

Outages are usually scheduled outside this period, but the lack of maintenance seems to have forced the power managers’ hands.

This should be considered together with the fact that the circular debt now stands at Rs540bn, or 2pc of GDP according to the IMF’s latest review, only slightly below the level it was at when the present government took charge, promising to eliminate it.

Consider also that our rulers have already begun rolling out failed ideas such as the early closure of shops, something they haven’t been able to implement in the past.

Read: Power managers ‘ignore’ PM’s order

Meanwhile, the pricing regime announced for the new generation using LNG is probably more expensive than furnace oil, the fuel they have been trying to replace because of its cost. This means that bridging the gap between cost of generation and cost of sale will be harder with LNG. One by one, all the points on which the government had staked its reputation are coming under stress: the present rulers were going to be superior managers to see through large projects and solve big problems in one go, and have a handle on pricing, etc. It is fair to say that by now the government has lost the initiative in tackling the power crisis, and appears to be muddling through like all previous administrations. We can only hope that this perception proves wrong.

Published in Dawn, April 15th, 2015

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