Awais Leghari is clearly not a fan of NEPRA’s State of Industry Reports (SOIR). He slammed the 2025 edition for being published with a 5–6 month delay, claiming the lag made it “misleading” and irrelevant to the sector’s current state.
The truth tells a different story. Nepra reports have almost always followed this timeline. Given the scale and complexity of the SOIR, a January release is entirely plausible. Delays are structural, not exceptional.
At another level, the ministry’s own entities bear responsibility. Persistent failures in timely submission of generation, distribution, transmission, and collection data may well have ledinto these lags.
To call the flagship report “dated and misleading” is sour in taste. Six months do not fundamentally change sector dynamics. No ground-breaking initiatives have occurred in that period that could invalidate Nepra’s findings.
If the ministry genuinely objects to “misleading conclusions,” the solution is simple: publish monthly or quarterly sectoral data publicly. Transparent, timely disclosure would allow researchers and policymakers to assess the sector accurately, rather than relying on reactive rebuttals.
READ MORE: Power sector: Nepra sees ‘limited’ progress despite fixes
The minister takes issue with Nepra’s characterization of the Debt Servicing Surcharge (DSS) of Rs3.23 per unit as “additional.” Technically, he is correct. The surcharge, levied to collect a small matter of Rs1800 billion to service the loans stemming from the government\s own colossal perennialinefficiency, over the next six years, is not new.
But winning the technical point misses the larger reality. This surcharge is the biggest exercise yet of penalizing the paying public for government inefficiencies. It is a tacit admission that the system cannot run without transferring the cost of loans, subsidies, and operational shortfalls directly to households.
Contrary to Leghari’s framing, the DSS did not exist forever. It was introduced at the start of FY24, and the government has now formally extended it for six more years from FY25. This is not a minor clarification. It is a direct burden on the public, effectively stamping in place a mechanism to extract billions to keep a poorly managed system afloat.
The minister went a step further by rejecting Nepra’s claim that system losses above regulatory targets impose an unnecessary burden on consumers. According to the minister, these gaps, both high losses and low recoveries, are financed by the Ministry of Finance through general revenue and therefore do not burden electricity consumers.
This argument takes the cake.
Losses above allowed limits and recoveries below targets feed directly and mechanically into the circular debt pipeline. There is no abstraction here. Every rupee lost due to inefficiency adds to the debt stock that the system cannot pay for on its own.
To argue that additions to circular debt do not burden consumers is baffling. Consumers are already paying for it. The DSS exists precisely because the bulk of circular debt flows from distribution inefficiencies and collection failures. In FY25 alone, losses and recoveries still imposed a toll of no less than Rs400 billion, the second highest annual accumulation in history despite claimed improvements.
The impact does not stop there. Transmission and distribution losses are routinely factored into quarterly tariff adjustments, which the regulator hears and approves every three months. These adjustments translate directly into higher bills. The link between losses and consumer burden is neither theoretical nor indirect. It is embedded in the tariff structure itself.
Claiming that the government absorbs the entire cost through general revenue is both incorrect and insensitive. General revenue is taxpayer money. Diverting it to cover inefficiencies in the power sector crowds out spending on health, education, and development. It does not eliminate the burden. It merely shifts and disguises it.
To trivialize this reality by suggesting that inefficiencies funded through the budget are somehow benign reflects a deeper problem. It normalizes failure. It treats the misuse of public resources as acceptable. And it ignores the fact that consumers pay for inefficiency twice, once through electricity bills and again through taxes.
Responding to assessment that rising electricity tariffs pushed consumers toward conservation and solar adoption, and that weak economic activity further suppressed demand, the minister countered by claiming the average tariff had declined from Rs53.04 per unit in March 2024 to Rs42.27 per unit by December 2025.
Choosing one’s own goalposts because it suits the narrative is typical of governments. Yes, tariffs have come down from their peaks. But that is like saying the scoreline improved from a 10–0 loss two years ago to a 7–0 loss this time.
The fact remains that electricity tariffs are still very high. Marginal relief does not erase cumulative damage. Nor does it restore confidence in the grid.
The shift to solar will not reverse simply because tariffs have slipped a few points. Consumers made that shift when electricity became unaffordable and unpredictable. That calculation has not changed.
If anything, the economics now tilt further away from the grid. Solar panels continue to get cheaper. Payback periods are shortening. Every incremental reduction in equipment cost reinforces the exit decision.
Against this backdrop, citing a fall in average tariffs misses the point. Behavior has already changed. The grid is competing not with past tariffs, but with falling solar costs and permanently altered consumer expectations.
Data delays do not negate dysfunction. Surcharges do not stop being burdens because they are relabeled. Losses do not disappear because they are routed through the budget. And tariffs do not become affordable because they fall from extreme to merely high.
The power sector’s problem is not perception. It is credibility. Until inefficiency is addressed at source rather than socialized through consumers and taxpayers, the exodus from the grid will continue. And no amount of arithmetic will change that.
Comments