The performance of the most capital-intensive sector of the country considered as the backbone of the economy leaves much to be desired.
In 1947, Pakistan had an installed generating capacity of 60MW, which increased to 7000MW by 1991.
The government established WAPDA as an Integrated Utility in 1959.
The following goals set in 1992 for Wapda’s Strategic Restructuring have not been met to date:
Enhance capital formation;
Improve efficiency and reconcile the prices; and
Introduction of competition to the power sector with the passage of time, by providing the greatest possible role through privatisation.
Thirty-two years later, excluding Nepra (National Electric Power Regulatory Authority), we have grown from one entity that was WAPDA (Water and Power Development Authority), to 21 entities after DISCOs (12 including KE), CPPA-G (Central Power Purchasing Agency-Guaranteed), NTDC (National Transmission and Dispatch Company), PPMC (Power Planning and Monitoring Company), PITC (Power Information Technology Company) , power generation companies GENCOs (4) and PEPCO (Pakistan Electric Power Company).
And CTBCM (Competitive Trading Bilateral Contract Market) mandated to NTDC in 2004 and to CPPA-G in 2015 and its approval in November 2020 awaits judgment of Nepra after hearing on its Test Run Report in July 2024. Furthermore, a debate on privatisation is still in progress.
Pakistan’s need for a 7-9% GDP growth requires accepting our decades of mismanagement, learning from it and undertaking an aggressive reform battle.
That requires ease of doing business, encouragement of FDI, and a competitive market approach with GOP not running businesses has to become the norm. This requires immediate
o Execution and roadmap for Deregulation of energy (Generation, Transmission, Distribution and Retail in the power, fuel and gas sectorial) is an essential action;
o Building a strong regulatory environment;
o Undertaking changes post-18th Amendment;
o Ensuring a competitive environment and working out challenges in way of expeditious implementation;
o Ensuring Transparency, Advocacy and Continuous Improvement by recalling that Carl Lewis in the ‘80s and ‘90s had a record-breaking 100m time of 9.86 sec. In Olympic 2024, Oblique Seville from Jamaica matched that time and came in last. Success is not static but evolves and what was amazing yesterday is baseline today. Learn from the past,........