LAHORE, Aug 8: Provincial governments do not have money to generate power and it requires amendments to the Nepra (National Electric Power Regulatory Authority) law to authorise them to regulate power production by the private sector.

This is the opinion of law and energy experts in the Punjab government given on Wednesday when asked whether the province could generate power or not under the law.

According to them, power production was on the concurrent list, but it was made a federal subject under the 18th Amendment.

Still, provinces can generate power under another article of the constitution. Nevertheless, experts say, producing power is a costly job, which Punjab or any other province cannot undertake because of a lack of funds.

For example, they say, it requires Rs200 to Rs300 billion for installation of a power plant of 200MW. Another Rs500 billion are needed for transmission, distribution, regulation and billing etc. This amount is much more than the annual development budget of the province.

The only option seems viable is to involve the private sector in power generation, but provincial governments cannot do this because of a lack of regulating authority, which lies with Nepra.

And if anybody wants to see provinces produce power through private sector, he must provide a legal cover for it in the form of amendments to the Nepra law. Engaging the private sector for power production and sending it to Nepra for licencing, rates and other terms and conditions looks strange and impracticable.

Experts say the Council of Common Interests agreed in 2010 to allow provinces to produce power up to 150MW through the private sector, but the federal government later forgot to amend the Nepra law.They say the parliament can, by amending the Nepra law, allow provinces to regulate power production by the private sector. Using federal law or authority for provinces is not new. Changing or making a new CrPC is a subject of the parliament, but these laws are executed and administered by provinces.

Experts point out some other complications, which they think must be removed before expecting from provinces to generate power. One of them is how to synchronise power production by provinces or by the private sector through them with the existing national grid.

“Establishing a separate network for 200MW power requires huge money and adding it to the national grid means marginalising the great effort,” says an official.