Year: 2022

Pakistan can’t win for losing. The South Asian country of over 230 million people was already hit by a perfect storm of economic and political difficulties this year; it has now been devastated by the most severe and catastrophic flooding in recent memory. Over 1,400 people and 800,000 livestock have died, about 1 million homes have been destroyed, and more than 33 million people have been adversely impacted by the floods. One-third of the nation is underwater right now, and the government forecasts an economic impact of more than $10…

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Climate change is playing havoc with the economic and social fabric of the country. The numbers are grim and point towards the enormity of the challenge ahead. The recent floods have inundated more than 250,000 km2 of land. Agriculture crops have been destroyed over an area of one million acres. Millions of animals are facing acute shortage of fodder, which is severely impacting their health and productivity. In addition, more than one million animals have been killed, depleting the livestock of the country. Pakistan has suffered infrastructure damages equivalent to…

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It is interesting to note that in the 1970s and 80s, and even today, power and gas were often provided in sub-urban or rural localities to gain political mileage. I remember watching TV clips of the same. Somehow a basic right is shown as a favour. Contrastingly, today the public acknowledges power as their basic right but pays the bills as a favour. In the initial period, Pakistan relied heavily on hydel to fulfil the country’s power needs. In the 1990s, during the tenure of PPP, independent power producers were…

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Continuous ban on the provision of new gas connections is not only irking the consumers but also increasing the backlog of the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL). The situation may worsen as there is no hope of lifting the ban by the government keeping in view the depleting indigenous gas reserves, increasing dependency on the import of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and other technical and administrative issues. “While there is no gas, how can we give new connections? But despite all this, we gave new connections in last fiscal…

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Financial advisers of the National Power Parks Management Company Limited (NPPMCL) — which owns and operates two LNG-fired plants with a combined capacity of around 2,500 megawatts — have asked the government to immediately finalise gas-sale and power-purchase agreements, debt recapitalisation and payment mechanism if it wanted an early sale of the two units to Qatar. The government is trying to sell off the two power plants — the 1,223MW plant in Kasur’s Balloki area and the 1,230MW Haveli Bahadur Shah plant in Jhang — to Qatar on a government-to-government…

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