LAHORE: All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) Saturday said that a conspiracy was being hatched against Punjab-based textile industry to sell expensive electricity (Rs 12 per unit) by depriving it of electricity generated by its own Captive Power Plants (CPPs).
The Association's spokeman said here that APTMA had issued policy statement with respect to Captive Power to generate in-house electricity, adding that textile industry had invested billions of dollars on the installation of the CPPs to meet energy requirements to safeguard it from electricity shortages.
He said the industry had installed a total capacity of 3000MW CPPs on both the SSGC (Sui Southern Gas Company) and the SNGPL (Sui Northern Gas Pipeline Limited) networks, resulting into achieving record $14 billion exports. However, the industry could have been ruined terribly in the absence of CPPs as the electricity shortage had already played havoc with industry in Punjab.
The APTMA spokesman said the campaigners should stop maligning the Captive Power Plants installed by the industry of Pakistan for personal gains. According to him, for the first time an efficiency-based tariff was proposed in the history of Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Resources during the previous regime.
The Captive Power Plants generate in-house electricity and presently running on an average efficiency of 45 percent in the textile industry including spinning, weaving and processing.
He added that gas-based IPPs could produce up to 750MW of electricity by consuming 150MMCFD gas if operated at designed efficiency, however, net consumption would be 585MW after adjusting average Transmission & Distribution losses currently at 22 percent of PEPCO network which was less than the CPPs generation-cum-consumption by consuming the same volume.
As far as the priority of industry on gas supply was concerned, he said, a change in the priority of gas load management for the industry in February 2013 under the Gas Load Management Policy had been approved by the Economic Coordination Committee on the basis of various recommendations including the Energy Expert Group under Integrated Energy Plan 2009-2022 and Energy Sector Task Force of Friends of Democratic Pakistan.
The spokesman also disassociated the APTMA with the sale of gas-based power to DISCOs by the Small Power Producers (SPPs), adding that if any CPP was currently producing electricity from gas was operating in its individual capacity.
He lamented that certain vested interests were active in maligning the APTMA under the garb of SPPs, which was unjustified and a baseless campaign.
The APTMA spokesman said the CPPs installed in the textile mills were highly efficient, however, the some quarters were criticizing the textile industry on efficiency, which was nothing but a malicious campaign against textile industry contributing $14 billion to national exchequer through exports and creating jobs for 15 million workers in the country.
He urged the policymakers to let the CPPs operate smoothly to generate in-house electiriity for textile industry and ensure seven-day week gas supply to industry so that the shortage of $3 billion exports could be met by running the closed capacity and provide jobs to the workers and increase exports of the country.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.