ISLAMABAD, Nov 3: The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) on Saturday granted a distribution licence to Islamabad Electric Supply Company (Iesco) to provide electricity to consumers under its service area upto Chakwal in Punjab.
Iesco will have no right to sell its service to specific consumers like, areas in the use of defence forces; small power producers (SPPs), who were operating in 1997; and housing colonies and other bulk purchasers, who had their own distribution system within their premises in 1997.
Iesco is the first corporate company of the unbundled Wapda to get a distribution licence since the inception of Nepra in 1997. The grant of distribution licence to Iesco, however, makes it clear that the defence forces will be given a separate “specific purpose distribution license” to provide electricity to cantonment, defence and other sensitive areas.
Under the license, Iesco will have a right to extend its power supply to new prospective consumers within a concessional territory defined by the administrative boundaries of the areas of Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Murree, Attock, Jhelum and Chakwal.
The licence also empowers the company to carry out distribution within an exclusive area upto eight kilometres of the farthest point of its current 11 KV distribution system. The area will be extended as Iesco carries out extension within its service territory.
Iesco, a power distribution company of Wapda, had been incorporated on April 25, 1998 when Wapda’s distribution section was restructured into eight independent companies. The geographical jurisdiction of Iesco, when it was working under Wapda as an area electricity board, comprised administrative divisions of Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Attock, Jhelum and Chakwal.
A Nepra announcement said the regulator would now consider to give similar licenses to other seven distribution companies of Wapda, now Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) — a holding company that replaced Wapda as an umbrella organization to look after public sector electricity.
The companies are now expected to function independently on commercial grounds and free from financial and administrative influence of the government or Wapda. However, the question of uniform or separate tariffs for various parts of the country still remains unanswered.
Grant of licence to distribution, generation and transmission companies of Wapda was one of the major milestones agreed with the World Bank under the power sector reforms and restructuring of Wapda. The delay in licenses has been delaying around $1 billion power sector loan, co-financed by the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.