ISLAMABAD, March 17: The country's bilateral and multilateral donors have expressed concern over the loss of billions of rupees caused to the national exchequer due to the government's failure in effectively implementing power sector reforms.

Some participants of the three-day Pakistan Development Forum (PDF), that opened here on Wednesday, told Dawn that the government was facing a difficult challenge of reducing huge power sector losses.

They said that despite the insistence of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank, the government could not check the Rs2 billion monthly power losses being incurred by the Water and Power Development Authority and the Karachi Electricity Supply Company.

"Issues like failure in implementing power sector reforms, mismanagement and corruption in the development projects, good governance and ensuring pro-poor growth will be discussed extensively during the PDF meeting," said a participant.

He said the donors did not understand why the Musharraf administration and the Jamali government had failed to "practically corporatize" Wapda's eight distribution and three generation companies. "In papers they have been corporatized but practically they are being run by the Wapda chairman," he said.

Another participant said both the country's power utilities were a burden on the budget and the government must get rid of them, preferably by privatizing them as early as possible.

"The losses of the KESC are roughly 40 per cent and Wapda's losses are not less than 27 per cent," he asserted. He said governance problems were affecting facilities like health, education and justice for the people.

"Rising poverty is also a serious challenge though people here are hesitant to talk about it," he said. A participant said the gross domestic product growth should be increased by achieving the objectives of industrialization.

"You get a better growth rate if you have good crops or when you get increased foreign assistance, this is not a good way of measuring GDP growth," he said. He said pro-poor growth would be possible when the government increased manifold its spending on the social sector. "Also let us not ignore the opposition parties, whose role could be equally important in many ways, provided their opinion is sought on various issues," he added.