ISLAMABAD -UNS: Interim Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar on Thursday said that the government was working on options to tackle inflated power bills without deviating from its agreements with multilateral institutions.
“We have conditionalities and agreements with multi-financial institutions which we have to fulfil at any cost,” he asserted, but at the same time added that negotiations with lenders on relief measures were under way.
The premier’s remarks come as Pakistan faces a host of economic challenges including rising inflation, depreciating rupee and declining market confidence. In recent days, people from across the country have taken to the streets against excessive power bills.
So far, the government has failed to come up with any relief measures as it tries to strike a balance between avoiding drawing the International Monetary Fund’s ire and causing more citizens to blow a fuse.
Yesterday, caretaker Finance Minister Shamshad Akhtar told senators and the electricity consumers to “manage (their) expectations”, saying the country’s fiscal space did not permit any subsidy or relief.
In an interactive session with journalists today, the premier acknowledged protests against exorbitant power bills but said the issue was being “magnified” by political parties gearing up for polls.
“We [the interim set-up] have no ulterior motive, plan or larger-than-life grand ambitions for which we are speaking here,” he said. “It is not like oppressive rulers have come to power and are sucking the blood of the poor.
“If someone is thinking like this, then they must shun this thought,” he said.
PM Kakar recalled that in the 1990s, load-shedding came forth as a challenging problem and governments entered into contracts with independent power producers (IPPs) to increase power production.
“But we did not realise the repercussions of those contracts which included paying a surcharge,” he said, pointing out that there were problems in transmission systems and the bill recovery process.
The prime minister noted that while power bills were being burnt in one part of a city, electricity of around 200 megawatts (MW) to 400MW was being pilfered.
“When our population was growing, we did not realise that our power structure remained dependent on fossil fuels and imported fuel. Whatever we were doing was on foreign reserves [in dollars] and that is impacting our other governance aspects,” he said.
