Year: 2021

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government is working on multiple plans to ensure sale of shares in K-Electric. Under plan A, the government is working to complete the transfer of K-Electric’s share to China’s Shanghai Electric Power, however, there are some pending issues that the Chinese company wants to settle before the transaction is complete. Earlier, Shanghai Electric Power had expressed a commitment to complete the utility company’s transaction within six months subject to resolution of issues. In a meeting chaired by the ministers for privatisation and energy, held in the…

ISLAMABAD: The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) has recently issued its determination on the applicability of open access charges to consumers and has rejected a petition of the Central Power Purchasing Agency-Guarantee (CPPA-G) in this respect connected with wheeling charges. Buyers or consumer’s choice and competition are the basic tenets of capitalist markets. Under open access, the consumer has a choice of procuring or generating his own electricity. Open access is one of the key instruments for fostering competition, promoting new investments and power supplies, improving capacity utilisation, reducing…

The interface between construction activity and climate change cannot be disregarded while discussing the role and importance of both these areas in sustainability of economic development. The construction industry and environment or climate change have two-way mutual repercussions. On the one side construction is an industry that has a lot to contribute to the climate change dynamics, negatively or positively depending on the construction techniques, while on the other side climate change impacts the construction industry itself in more than one way. The first and foremost impact of construction is…

ISLAMABAD: Misaligned and reactive policies have perhaps been the greatest woes for Pakistan’s power sector. Be it the 1994 and 2002 power policies, which rightly incentivised the generation business but failed to build a consumer protection mechanism over the years based on past learnings, or more recently, the proposed changes to the sector’s landscape without effective consultation and impact analysis, potentially benefiting only a handful at the cost of masses, the sector calls for holistic and comprehensive reforms, rather urgently. Revelations made in a 278-page inquiry report on the power sector…