ISLAMABAD: In order to meet the higher demand for power, the government of Pakistan has spent Rs138.213bn ($1.455bn) on different power generation projects and has managed to generate only 2,996 megawatts (MW) extra in the last five years, sources in the Ministry of Water and Power revealed.
The government spent Rs38.729bn in government-owned power generation companies (GENCOs) for investment in new power plants, Rs47.6bn in National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC) for improvement of transmission network and Rs51.884bn in distribution companies for revamping of their 132 KV, 11 KV and Low Voltage Network.
The sources said that these expenditures enabled the government to transmit output of 2,996 MW of the new power plants to load centres.
It will also be providing capacity for accommodating future increase in load demand and removing transmission network constraints to allow distribution of power to constrained areas of main load centres and Balochistan.
The government has also spent the amount in improvement and revamping of power distribution companies (DISCOs) networks for meeting load demand, accommodating new connections and reducing losses.
In addition, the government has spent generously under the head of subsidy to mitigate electricity crisis in the country and spent Rs701.2bn in the last five years.
The subsidy injection enabled DISCOs to pay the outstanding bills of independent power producers (IPPs) to overcome fuel shortage.
This crisis mitigation effort resulted in an overall increase in electricity generation and electricity consumption by 10 percent over the last three years and 3.0 per cent per annum on compound growth basis.
In addition the works of village electrification and new connections were facilitated. Consequently 57,777 villages were electrified and 3.926m connections were installed.
Internews
