KARACHI: Chairman of National Business Group and President of Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum Mian Zahid Hussain has said that the power sector may crumble under the burden of defective planning and wrong contracts, and the business community hope that China will bail out Pakistan from this mess.
He said the power sector was marching towards un-resolvable problems while Prime Minister Imran Khan and COAS Qamar Javed Bajwa were trying their best to tackle the issue which was highly laudable.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that the government had completed talks with the IPPs which would result in savings of Rs42 billion per annum, and now it had initiated talks with Chinese companies to reduce tariff, capacity charges and interest rates etc. which was according to the national interests.
He said that power plants with a capacity of 16000 megawatts were planned under CPEC and projects with 6500 megawatts were expected to come online soon.
This would result in the burden of hundreds of billions of rupees as the country was already producing surplus electricity, and completion of projects would push surplus power to 50 percent of the required electricity.
Due to the sensitivity and importance of the issue, the prime minister and the COAS were personally handling the issue and trying to extend repayment duration from 10 to 20 years, he said.
In case of success Pakistan would save $500 million per annum which would be a big relief while it may reduce the tariff of electricity which was very high as compared to competing nations, he said.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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