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Posts Tagged ‘China’

A must read for the PM Pakistan, Prof. Ahsan Iqbal and the entire cabinet of wise men and women

“Power policy”

By Dr Farrukh Saleem
Sunday, July 28, 2013
From Print Edition of the daily “The News”.

Capital suggestion

Thirty percent of the new power policy makes sense. Seventy percent of the new power policy is poppycock. The PML-N wants to deliver. Delivery has three pre-requisites: intention, planning and capacity to implement. The PML-N seems well intentioned and is engaged in some sort of planning as well. In my analysis, capacity is the missing link.

Here’s the sensible part of the policy: smart feeders, re-prioritisation of gas allocation, furnace oil priority for efficient plants and performance contracts with Discos. Furthermore, holding the board of directors responsible, energy-saving bulbs and decentralisation are all steps in the right direction. Other sensible elements include a federal adjuster, external collection agencies, prepaid meters, key client managers and time-of-day metering.

Now the poppycock. We will convert to coal. Imagine: we would need 100,000 tons of coal a day while our current production is 8,000 tons. Realistically, Thar coal will need five to eight years plus a few billion dollars. Time we don’t have, billions we don’t have.

Lo and behold, the power policy does not talk about the two elephants in our power sector. First, our IPPs are running some of the most inefficient power plants on the face of the planet. Second, the government has already resolved to jack up the tariff. The truth is that Pakistan’s IPPs have no incentive to become efficient and Pakistan’s IPPs are massively over billing – and still getting paid.

More poppycock. We will import coal. Imagine: we need to import 100,000 tons a day while our ports are currently handling 6,000 tons a day. Plus, a multibillion dollar logistical and supply-chain infrastructure to transport all that imported coal to the power plants day-in-day-out. Time we don’t have, billions we don’t have.

Even more poppycock: the China connection. The truth is that China is converting its own coal plants to LNG and the truth is that the world outside China is no longer willing to finance coal plants.

Amazingly, the power policy does not talk about the two elephants in the room. One, Nepra the abettor not the regulator, and our oil-guzzling, hugely inefficient IPPs. The truth is that our power plants are gulping down anywhere from 24 kg to 46 kg of furnace oil to produce 100 kWh whereby the world outside Pakistan produces 100kWh with 14 kg of oil. Shockingly, the power policy does not talk about the two elephants in the room. One, our IPPs raking in annual returns of 35 percent to 45 percent. Two, the PPP government also jacked up the tariff that sunk the industrial sector, increased the incentive to steal and doubled the circular debt.

The truly sad truth is that the government of Pakistan (GoP) has signed contracts with the IPPs on behalf of the poor residents of Pakistan. And those contracts have produced only two losers – Pakistan and its even poorer residents. Call it incompetence, another case of public money private greed or a little of both.

Why don’t we accept that the GoP and the IPPs are united in an unholy matrimony? Wedded till 2025 (read: sovereign guarantees). And, regardless of what we put in – oil, gas or coal – our IPPs in their current state of affairs are bound to produce expensive electricity.

We need a Nepra on steroids. We need Nepra to hold IPPs by their necks to improve their efficiency and produce cheaper power.

PS: Who has really formulated this policy? The GoP or the IPP lobby? Elite capture of policy is “where resources transferred designated for the benefit of the poor population are usurped by a few individuals of superior status”.

The writer is a columnist based in Islamabad. Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com

Twitter: @saleemfarrukh

China has really made a Maamoo of India. Never ever an armed to teeth nuclear nation has been so hapless and miserable.

It is just unbelievable how India is tamed and now behaving like a wet cat.

Indians are now remembering a Chinese saying “”Respect the strong, blackmail the weak”

A Times of India news

Chinese are not going to vacate Ladakh anytime soon, strategic experts feel

Link:- http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Chinese-are-not-going-to-vacate-Ladakh-anytime-soon-strategic-experts-feel/articleshow/19804826.cms

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singhhad tried to soothe a frazzled nation by saying that the Chinese incursion into Depsang Bulge in eastern Ladakh on April 15 was a “localized” affair, and the government had a plan to resolve it.

But strategic experts believe this latest round of border problems between India and China is the most serious till date, and unlike the government, they don’t think the Chinese are going to vacate any time soon and that this may lead to other similar face-offs in other sectors along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

Bhaskar Roy, Chinese security expert, says, this time India has not depended on its own strength to stand up to China. There is a Chinese saying, “Respect the strong, blackmail the weak”.

Former foreign secretary, Kanwal Sibal, observes, while the PM has suggested that the matter should not be escalated, the fact that the Chinese ambassador was summoned by the foreign secretary has already done so. Any Chinese intrusion across any point at the LAC will always be a local affair and hence, says Sibal, the implication is that the Chinese can keep doing it and we will keep reacting to it like this in the face of “uncompromising attitude of the Chinese and their determination to question our sovereignty.

Strategic affairs expert Brahma Chellaney says, it will be nationally demeaning if either foreign minister Salman Khurshid’s visit to Beijing on May 9 or Chinese Premier Li’s Keqiang trip to India on May 20 takes place while the intruders stay put and fortify their positions. Singh has given only comfort to the aggressor by his remark that the intrusion was a local affair, he says, with Beijing welcoming his comment. “To make amends, Singh should at least signal that good-neighbourly ties demand respect for the territorial status quo and that he hopes Beijing will withdraw its intruding troops so that Khurshid’s Beijing visit and Premier Li’s New Delhi stopover can go ahead,” he says.

Jayadeva Ranade, another China expert, says, this intrusion was unprovoked, but this is not an “isolated” incident, as the government is trying to show. There have been similar incursions in many areas along the LAC particularly since 2008, he says. “Beijing remains transparently unmoved by the adverse media publicity and damage it has caused to India-China relations. It has neither moved to resolve the situation despite three flag meetings at the level of local army commanders and communications from New Delhi requesting resolution. Beijing has thus made it abundantly clear that it will defuse the situation only at a time of its choosing. Beijing’s stance confirms too that the stand-off is not a local incident provoked by the action of a local commander, but one initiated with the full knowledge of China’s senior leadership,” Ranade explains. He says that the timing may be coinciding with Singh’s Japan visit and probably be a signal from China warning India against New Delhi’s Tokyo outreach. “Beijing is adept at using a blend of threats and promise of military retaliation to deter an adversary from taking actions contrary to Beijing’s interests,” he adds.

While the PM’s statement would appear to substantiate the Indian official position that the conflicting perceptions of the LAC in the Western sector has resulted into this situation at the Daulat Beg Oldie (DBO), says Alka Acharya of the Institute of Chinese Studies, an early resolutiondoes not seem imminent. “To that extent it is localized in northern Ladakh, south of the Karakoram Pass. But to the extent that it has brought about a situation which earlier “intrusions” did not, it has to be treated with more than the usual response,” she says.

“In many ways, the responses have been initiated but the manner in which the talks are continuing, an early resolution does not seem imminent. We appear to be reaching the point where both sides are upholding the position that they are operating in their own territory- question is will both agree to restoring status quo ante,” she adds.

This has reference to the news published on November 04, 2011 in the daily “Pakistan Today” under the heading ” Pakistan going after extremists will be a ‘real wild card’: Rice” Link :-  http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2011/11/pakistan-going-after-extremists-will-be-a-real-wild-card-rice/

Ms Condoleezza Rice let me tell you that your words Calling Pakistan “a continuing problem” for both the US and Afghanistan are very offensive, uncalled for and an insult for a nation, who gave more sacrifices in men and material, than combined losses of 49 NATO countries, fighting your sown and harvested terrorism in Afghanistan.

And don’t forget Ms C. Rice that Pakistan and this region is suffering, just because your agencies failed to stop 9/11 plotters, who got training in aeroplane flying right inside your country; and none of them belonged to Pakistan.

America has a habit of waging wars on innocent people on false pretexts.

We in Pakistan wonder, what wrong we have done over the last 64 years, in looking after your needs and helping you as a friend e.g. in Korean war era under various pacts, allowing overflights for your U2 planes to spy over USSR, connecting USA with China, bringing down USSR in Afghanistan war in 80s, saving American soldiers from being lynched by Somalian war lords, saving US staff from burning Islamabad Embassy,  making America a single super power and fighting so called American war on terror  imposed on this region that too because of sheer incompetence of US intelligence agencies, in stopping 9/11 attacks in the first instance.

Ms Condoleezza Rice, the fact is that America has time and again proved, with its betrayal in its friendship with Pakistan, that you people are and never were worthy of Pakistan’s friendship and all the sacrifices we gave for you. Moreover, now there is no doubt that you understand one and only one language, learnt in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

And the moral of the story is, that a nation may survive being not a friend of America but, it can’t survive, being a friend of America. 

THANK YOU AMERICA

By: Col Khawar Munir Haroon(Retd),Sitara-e-Imtiaz(Military)

Thank you America, you did what you are capable of doing. You should have done it much earlier. You have unnecessarily put your people, the tax payers, under relentless pressure. Your “war on terror” expenditure has crossed $ 4 Trillion dollars. Expenditure on maintaining your troops in Afghanistan has crossed $ 100 Billion dollars. Your budget deficit is touching $ 1.645 Trillion dollars. You are under debt of over $ 14 Trillion dollars. Your economy is standing on the moving sands. A bubble, which your own economists are predicting, is about to burst. Very rightly so you have put strings to your support to Pakistan.

It is always good to run away from the theater of war. You did it in Korea, then in Vietnam. Prior to that, you buckled in front of Cuba, when Castro and Che Guevara kicked out your prodigy, Batista. You are running out of Afghanistan now. Do it fast, lest your poodle stops wagging its tail. This time your exit should be forever.

The recent statement of US ambassador to Pakistan that :(ISLAMABAD: US ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter has said that the United States has right to interfere in Pakistan’s economic and governance affairs as the former provides funds to it, Geo News reported.

Addressing a ceremony here, Cameron said that the United States provides largest aid to Pakistan, therefore, it has right to interfere in economic and governance affairs.http://www.thenews.com.pk/NewsDetail.aspx?ID=8937)  has clearly laid bare the American mind set towards Pakistan.

Although, US president calls Pakistan as an enormous country and an ally of America, who has given tremendous sacrifices in fighting the menace of terrorism, yet, Mr. Munter has the audacity to tell us that America has a right to interfere in our internal affairs, just because we are receiving their aid. By this analogy, can the US ambassador to Israel, give the same statement, because that country is the biggest recipient of US aid?

I will ask Mr. Munter, if helping another country is the criteria for interference in its affairs, then Pakistan has all the right to meddle in the affairs of your country. Hope, you remember our greatest favour,   in making America the sole super power. So, before uttering such statements, just weigh our favours to America in monetary terms, and calculate how much you still owe to us, in return of Pakistan’s just one favour to America.

Mr. Munter,  should also know that there is a long list of our favours to his great country, starting from permitting U-2 flights over USSR, facilitating Kissinger’s visit to China, saving American soldiers’ life in Somalia etc. He should not force us  to think that to  call him and his country a friend, is a mistake. Perhaps, he only understand one language taught  by the brave people of Vietnam, Iraq & Afghanistan. True friendship, has no meaning in any of his dictionaries.

The government of Pakistan must immediately take notice of this blatant interference in its internal affairs by the American ambassador and send him back to his country. This punishment will restore the sanctity of our integrity and shall be remembered by Munter, throughout his life. This will also send a message to the world, that Pakistan is an honourable nation and it will not offer other cheek, if slapped on one.

Actually, every individual and nation must understand that, one can only be insulted to the extent, it is permitted. In other words you can’t be insulted, more than you allow.