BY AMIR SIAL
The government is faced with the daunting task of improving electricity bill collection to hundred percent before the advent of a load-shedding-free era from 2018 onwards.
An official source said the international financial institutions (IFIs) have mandated to the government to improve the electricity bill collection to hundred per cent within the current financial year. They have given a lot of financial support to improve the system and want to ensure that the government remains on track in the medium to long term.
The IFIs want hundred per cent recovery for all the electricity generated as that would make an ideal case to off-load the remaining power distribution companies (DISCOs) to the investors. The government has already delayed the privatisation programme as the accounts of DISCOs were not satisfactory.
The government, a source said, has made it mandatory for DISCOs to issue bills having a photo of the actual meter reading on the recorded date. The system accuracy in Punjab region’s five DISCOs has gone up to 90 per cent. Sindh has also shown great improvement but Khyber Pakhtunkhwa still had to do a lot of hard work, as otherwise long load shedding cannot be avoided.
The government estimates that 10,000 MW of energy would be injected into the system by first quarter of 2018. The major thrust would come from three LNG-based power plants, having a cumulative capacity of 3600 MW being set up in the load centres of Punjab.
The bill recovery has remained at 80 per cent during the last three years, but it crossed 90 per cent mark during the first six months of the current financial year. Some of the analysts said that the bill collection increased due to inflated bills. However, the Ministry of Water and Power denies the charge saying that accurate billing was being promoted through photo billing.
