Category: News & Announcement

There is no doubt that the current economic situation compels the power purchaser (the Power Ministry) to renegotiate the terms of Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) of the IPPs (Independent Power Producers). It is necessary for all involved in this to engage in the spirit of accommodation rather than assert a cold-blooded prerogative based on written contracts that are backed by sovereign guarantees. The basic equation before is the proportion of capacity charges in the total electricity tariff. As we know the electricity payments made to the power producers have two…

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ISLAMABAD: The nine-member committee headed by ex-chairman of SECP Mohammad Ali which was earlier constituted by Prime Minister Imran Khan on August 7, 2019 has unfolded startling disclosures in its report recently submitted with the top man of the country that under the 1994 power policy, 16 out of 17 IPPs, which invested a combined capital of Rs50.80 billion, have so far earned profit in excess of Rs415 billion, having taken out dividends in excess of Rs310 billion. According to the report, whose copy is available with The News, most…

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The government is focusing on wrong policy initiatives due to which the circular debt is ever increasing. In fact the recoveries of past years have been shown as increased collection when the regulator adjusted and allowed prior year adjustments in the distribution tariff. The wrong focus is on the generation cost and rewriting of the contracts whereas the actual malaise lies in the transmission and distribution systems and their attendant problems of corruption, inefficiency and mismanagement. By this strategy we are alienating investment and crucially the foreign direct investment by…

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WASHINGTON: A one-time lockdown won’t halt the novel coronavirus and repeated periods of social distancing may be required into 2022 to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed, Harvard scientists who modeled the pandemic’s trajectory said Tuesday. Their study comes as the US enters the peak of its COVID-19 caseload and states eye an eventual easing of tough lockdown measures. The Harvard team’s computer simulation, which was published in a paper in the journal Science, assumed that COVID-19 will become seasonal, like closely related coronaviruses that cause the common cold, with higher transmission…

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With the UK going into a total self-imposed quarantine, several large American cities in lockdown, and distressing scenes in Spain and Italy, life right now feels chaotic and insecure. It’s a crisis. The economy has ground to a halt. These are the worst of times. And yet there is hope. This is temporary. It will end. Already, there are reasons to be optimistic. So if you’re feeling a bit hopeless, consider: Life in China and South Korea is returning to normalChina has reported very few new domestic coronavirus cases since…

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