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By Salman Khalid and Kamal Munir | 10/10/2011 12:00:00 AM
PAKISTAN has been facing a series of power crises over roughly the last two decades. However, since
2007, the situation has deteriorated rapidly.
As a result of severe electricity shortage, industry, commerce and agriculture have all taken serious hits
with the country`s growth prospects dimming significantly. At the same time, residential consumers have
had to endure over eight-to-12-hour blackouts in major cities. The situation is even worse in rural
Pakistan.
Surprisingly, the total energy produced in the country has actually decreased nearly 10 per cent between
2007 and 2010. This is primarily due to lower-capacity utilisation, which in turn has been the result of
`circular debt`, a concept that has been bandied around freely over the past few years as the primary
problem that besets energy production in Pakistan.
However, despite its dominance of policy discourse, circular debt is not the fundamental issue here. The
two most glaring reasons behind the present mess Pakistan finds itself in are the 1994 energy policy and
the resultant extreme over-reliance on expensive imported fuel mix.
It is easy to forget that the roots of the present power crisis can be traced to almost two decades back
with the advent of the highly generous 1994 power pohcy forindependent power producers (IPP). At that
time the country`s electricity generation relied on a fuel mix of approximately 70:30 in favour of hydro
versus thermal.
This changed dramatically over the next decade with the fuel mix going to 30 per cent hydro and almost
70 per cent thermal by the end of 2010.
This dramatic shift in generation source occurred because the 1994 power policy (and later the 2002
power policy) did not discriminate on fuel source being employedand made the country hostage to
fluctuations in international oil and gas prices (the country does not possess either commodity in sufficient
quantity).
The cost of this strategic policy-level folly can be understood with the following comparison. As per the
National PowerSystem Expansion Plan 20102030, as of 2010, Wapda (employing hydro production)
generated electricity at Rs1.03/kWh ((1.2 cents/kWh) while public-sector thermal power plants provided
the same at Rs8.5/kWh (10 cents/kwh).
However, the IPPs (primarily thermal) provided the same at Rs9.58/kWh (11.2 cents/kWh). As a result,
the average blended cost of generation was Rs6.6/kWh (7.7 cents/kWh) in 2010 which further increased
to Rs9.81/kWh (11.5 cents/kWh) for the end consumer due to line losses and theft in the transmission and
distribution systems.
It should be noted that the above numbers underestimate the true cost because the cost of energy from
Salman Khalid has managed investments in power generation in Pakistan, Turkey, Bangladesh and Saudi
Arabia.
Kamal Munir teaches Strategy and Policy at the University of Cambridge.