ISLAMABAD, May 23: Experts at a roundtable on Wednesday held bad governance, mismanagement and incompetent workforce in the power sector responsible for the declining state of affairs in electricity generation and transmission networks.

They also deplored the government and bureaucratic interference in the power sector blocking the way for private sector to have level playing field.

The roundtable on ‘Power Sector Reforms: Current Situation, Future Outlook and Road to Sustainability’ was organised by Institute of Policy Studies (IPS).

The experts called for bringing about reforms in the generation as well as distribution networks to improve efficiency of the power sector.

“The main issue is investment in the power sector as the investors are more worried about their returns if the governance issues are not resolved,” Abdul Rahim Khan, former member Nepra, chairing the session said and added:  “Bureaucrats wanted to wind up Nepra in 2002 and now they are in control of the electricity regulator – so how can we expect it to be independent.”

The speakers also criticised the apex court and the government over the rental power project (RPP) issue and said that the mismanagement had scared the power sector investors away from the country.

“Giving permissions to the furnace oil based RPPs to operate under the policy was itself a major flaw in the policy as any fastest oil based plant would take at least one and a half year to start operations,” Mr Khan said. He added: “The fast track policy for the rental plants was suitable only for gas operated units.”

To improve the power sector he said, the government interference has to be reduced to a minimum and the electricity regulator Nepra should be made a more independent and autonomous agency.

“Unfortunately the respective governments have been using electricity as a political tool and not much has been done to eradicate the root causes of distortions in this sector,” he added.

Salahuddin Rifai, former General Manager National Transmission and Distribution Centre (NTDC) blamed the bureaucracy and the political agenda of successive regimes for mismanagement in power sector.

“The average cost of installing one MW capacity is $1 million in Pakistan whereas it is around $300,000 in Bangladesh,” Mr Rafai said.

He said Chichuki Maliah power plant was the perfect example of loopholes and corruption in the system.

“Wapda was establishing the plant at $330 million but the then prime minister allotted the project to Qatri sheikh who after wasting one year raised the cost of project to $690 million,” he said.

As a nation Pakistanis have spent around $4 billion on import of more than three million generators in the last four years and to add to the inflationary impact the cost of operating these generators was also very high due to increase in oil and gas prices.

The seminar was informed that the total receivables of Pepco were estimated around Rs375 billion, which has thrown the whole system into financial crisis.

Participating in the discussion Khalid Javed, founding managing director of Public Procurement regulatory authority, said that as per his calculations around $30bn was needed to mitigate the current energy crisis.