ISLAMABAD, JULY16: Ex-Commerce Minister Dr. Gohar Ejaz has come under fire from Energy Minister Awais Leghari for a recent tweet in which he referred to the federal administration as inept and stated that the “Power Sector is the True Face of its incompetence.”
Greetings, former minister. FYI (inaccurate) Thirty-five years of poor and desperate planning is coming to an end. The privatization of discos has been forcefully started for the first time. Something that had never been done before,” he tweeted on Monday.
According to him, the government plans to finish the first round of privatization by June 2025. Within a year, all GENCOs will be privatized, and any stranded assets will be liquidated to lower capacity payments and the government’s involvement in the electricity industry. “Our goal is to raise the percentage of native fuel in the fuel mix, which is already over 75% local. We’re still working hard to use as much local fuel as possible while protecting valuable foreign exchange in the process,” he continued.
All costly RFO-based IPPs that rely on capacity payments will be removed from the system. “At the moment, we generate power with little to no RFO. Furthermore, on a unit basis, the capacity cost related to the same is less than one rupee, the speaker said.
We’re still in communication with the IPPs that were set up after 2015 to eliminate prolonged load shedding throughout the nation in order to improve cash flow and allow for a commensurate drop in electricity prices. While we keep working to eliminate transmission restrictions, and the PSDP has already been used to award the funds for some of those. Enabling the effective use of the current generation capacity is essential,” he said.
