Rental Power: Dawn

Federal Minister for Water and Power Raja Parvez Ashraf has angrily rejected allegations of corruption and kickbacks involving rental power projects in Pakistan and claimed he is ‘prepared to be hanged’ if any of the allegations are proved.

Hyperbole and political mud-slinging aside, the government’s ferocious pursuit of 1,909 MW of rental power to help bridge the power deficit in the country does raise some troubling questions that have yet to be answered satisfactorily by the government.

It is an established fact that rental power will be more expensive than the power currently available, though the precise figures are disputed by all involved. So the first question to be asked is: do we necessarily need expensive rental power? Currently, partly due to the circular debt and partly due to operational reasons, a chunk of power-generation capacity available with the Independent Power Producers is lying unutilised. So rather than opting for new rental projects, could the government not focus more on solving the financial problems facing existing power-generation facilities?

Moreover, fixing operational problems at the power-generation end as well as in the transmission and distribution systems could help the system provide more electricity to end-users. Given that rental power projects are being signed on for three- to five-year periods, couldn’t the government in the same time-frame fix many of the problems at the generation, transmission and distribution levels? There is no obvious reason why it cannot.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Rental Power: Dawn