Govt urged to share future energy plan with LCCI

LAHORE: Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has urged the government to share its future energy plan with it because the highest-ever electricity tariff and more than 14 hours of power outages have crippled trade and industry.

Cheap and uninterrupted power supply is only way to achieve economic targets set for the year 2012 but neither the government was sharing its future plans nor paying any heed to the difficulties being faced by the trade and industry, said LCCI President Irfan Qaiser Sheikh in a statement on Friday.

"How the government would establish its writ and from where it would collect revenues to run its day-to-day affairs when the industrial activities have come to a complete halt," he added.

He said that the government should understand that economic wellbeing was a must for democracy. Unemployment, price hike, industrial closures always gave birth to lawlessness and anarchy in the country. Therefore, the government should understand the ground realities and reset its priorities.

Sheikh said that it was astonishing that on the one hand the government circles were talking of economic stability in 2012 while on the other hand they were not sharing any kind of roadmap to achieve this goal. He said that despite massive repeated increases in electricity tariff in recent past the government had failed to decrease ever-increasing gap between the cost of power generation and revenue collection.

He said that the Pepco was adding up a staggering amount of Rs 30 billion per month as circular debt due to inefficiency in collection of power dues, its failure to stop power theft and Kunda culture. He said that these inefficiencies were actually an unjust tax on honest power consumers. The industrial sector as a whole pays its dues in time and there were no line losses/theft most of the industrial estates and industrial estates in Lahore were an example.

LCCI president said that the power sector planners should take cue from the efficient power distribution companies like IESCO and FESCO where the line losses were only 9 to 11 percent and the collection of dues was 99.9 percent in contrast the line losses in SESCO (Sindh Electric supply company) are 40 percent while the situation in PESCO, HESCO and QESCO is almost the same. He said that all the DISCOs should be directed to determine their respective electricity tariff on the basis of line losses in that particular DISCO. For instance if the line losses in one DISCO were bigger than other the power tariff in that particular DISCO should be more.

Sheikh said that stern action against these inefficiencies or unscrupulous elements involved in malpractices would enable government to decrease power tariff instead of making moves to jack up the electricity prices. He said the business community was surprised that instead of taking measures to control line losses and enhance cheap power generation up to capacity, the policies were being evolved to add to the miseries of the businessmen. He said that industrial sector was passing through a critical time of its history. A large number of industrial units had already closed down their operations due to acute energy shortage. He said that situation needed corrective measures but the policy makers were doing the other way round.