Loud Thinking

Posts Tagged ‘power’

Daily The News reports today that “Conditions of IMF met for $7.3 billion bailout package”.

Link:- http://images.thenews.com.pk/26-08-2013/ethenews/t-25004.htm

Mr. Ishaq Dar kindly clarify the following 7 questions relating to the facts regarding the Pakistan’s economy..!

1. Firstly, you stated on the floor of the house that we are taking fresh loan from the IMF to repay the old IMF loan.

2. You also stated on the same floor of the house that the loan amount from the IMF will be $5.5billion at an interest rate of 3%, which was exorbitantly high interest rate considering that IMF had already decided in December, 2012 to give loan on ZERO interest rate to poor countries. Kimdly inform which country can be poorer than Pakistan, who was unable to even repay its loans?

Your kind attention is invited towards the following news item titled “IMF extends zero interest rates on poorer country loans” published by the daily “Pakistan Today” on 23 December, 2012 detailed news available at the link :- http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2012/12/23/news/profit/imf-extends-zero-interest-rates-on-poorer-country-loans-2/

3. Secondly, you pledged on the floor of the house that loan terms will not be against the interests of Pakistan.

4. Then you increased the electricity tariff for the Pakistani industrial users by a whopping 70% to fulfil the IMF conditions for the loan.

5. Don’t you think that this power tariff increase will destroy our economy and create unemployment, as the increased cost of production of each and every item, under the use of the poorest of the poor, will make the goods highly expensive and the poor will become even more poorer? In fact, your this step will ever be remembered in the history of Pakistan, as the one and only top most action which murdered the economy of the country and pushed additional millions of people below the poverty line.

I am also afraid that your this single step may not forever seal, the fate of PMLN’s chances in coming to the power again, as and when the negative impact is gradually filtered down the line.

If I were the PM Pakistan, would never have approved this fatal decision of increasing power rates of the already limping industry of Pakistan.

5. Why you earlier mislead the nation that $5.5billion is being taken for the repayment of the old loan and now the cat is out of the bag and the loan amount is actually $7.3billion?

6. The above fact at #5 also proves that you also wrongly said that this loan was being taken to repay the old loan.

7. Hope you remember the maiden speech of the PM in the Parliament house wherein, the PM promised with the nation on the floor of the house, that nothing will be hidden from the nation. Then why you hid the fact that this loan is being taken NOT just for the repayment of the loan; and why you hid the fact that this loan amount was actually $7.3billion and not $5.5billion?

An early reply shall be highly appreciated.

Best regards,

Syed Nayyar Uddin Ahmad

Lahore.

Sent from my iPad3 4G LTE

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

Straight Talk – The Power Crisis & The 780 million rip-offs. (The Nation, Sunday, 10^th July, 2011) 

The threat of a looming power crisis that the country would be facing in the coming years was raised way back in 1994, when a group of concerned citizens had filed a Public Interest Litigation against KESC in the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

Since then, Helpline Trust and other citizens have repeatedly raised this issue at various platforms. Yet despite the ringing of the alarm bells over the years, no government, civilian or military, has taken this looming crisis seriously.

Instead, the present government has excelled in promoting the culture of corruption in its various ministries. There are reports of mega corruption scandals almost every day and yet our leaders have the audacity to insist that they must be allowed to complete their five-year term in office, because the citizens had voted for the PPP in the last elections.

However, the voters had not given the government a carte-blanche authority to loot and plunder the country. They had voted for the PPP, with the hope that this time it would fulfill its promise of providing Roti – Kapra – Makaan to the citizens and establish good governance, accountability and enforcement of the Rule of Law. But, as in the past, it has failed to honor any of these promises.

However, instead of introducing good governance and investing in power generation units and improving the output and efficiency of the existing units, the government has been indulging in the worst kind of corruption and rip-offs in the power sector.

First we had the questionable KESC Privatization deal, which is still shrouded in secrecy, followed by the scandals of the massive rip-offs in the importation of IPP plants and the agreements connected with these shady deals.  (http://www.helplinetrust.org/EDC%201/youtube%20ht/kesc.htm).

This was then followed by the news of the recent rip-off in the importation of the Turkish Karkey power rental ship, which, according to reports, is standing idle off the shores of Karachi for the last few months and is costing this electricity starved City of Lights a cool  $9 million a month.

The deal to pay capacity charges of approximately Rs.780 million was struck between the clueless former minister of water and power, Raja Pervez Ashraf, who had boldly announced that there would be no load shedding in Pakistan after December 2009 and Raja Babar Ali Zulqarnain, son of AJK President Raja Zulqarnain Khan, the country representative for the company Karkey Karadeniz Elektrik Uretim AS in Pakistan.

The power rental ship is standing idle because the government is not making any efforts to ensure fuel supply to make the unit fully operational. Instead, it is paying Rs26.37 per unit as capacity charges, while Rs. l5.48 per unit is being paid under the head of fuel cost.

This multi-million dollar loss to the national economy came to the surface during the hearing of the petition of eight power distribution companies. During the hearings, it was revealed that Karkey is producing only 30 megawatts of power, against an agreement to add 231 MWs to the system.

Allegations of massive corruption and mismanagement in the power sector have been circulating for a very long time, but who are the real Hidden Hands that are behind this recent rip-off is not clear but it is obvious that they must all be very pleased with themselves and smiling all the way to the bank. 

In India, the citizens have forced the government to form a Grand Alliance against Corruption and introduce a bill to tackle the problem. India’s Supreme Court has also ordered a special investigation into unde­clared money stashed in foreign bank accounts of the rich and the famous.

While in contrast, instead of assisting the Supreme Court of Pakistan in punishing the culprits involved in corruption, our democratically elected Awami government has tried everything in the book to sabotage trial proceedings.

It has frustrated the Court’s efforts to investigate cases of corruption and the Rs.5 billion NICL scandal, by trying to suspend ADG FIA, Zafar Qureshi, on the pretext of talking to media without departmental authorization.

However, the CJ has stepped in and ordered the government to reinstate the ADG or face its wrath. Such is the commitment of this morally corrupt government to eliminate the octopus of corruption and improve our system of governance.

According to media reports, all this was being done to accommodate the leaders of PML-Q, who have come forward to join a shaky coalition, to prevent the PPP government from immediate collapse.

General Musharraf, in his eight years of governance, had the opportunity to tackle the power crisis and could have taken the positive steps to set up power generation plants and revamp the dilapidated and outdated distribution.

But instead, this government had also ignored this problem and had taken took the easy way out, by privatizing the utility service, without examining the ground realities and had allowed allowing this city of lights to plunge into darkness.

And unfortunately, the present government has also failed to rectify the mess that the previous government had left and even failed to provide the basic facilities like electricity, gas, clean water and a decent health and education system to its citizens.

Our leaders have shamelessly humiliated and shamed this nation. Under this government, we do not have democracy, but a politics of bullets and fear, as it has failed to even protect the lives and property of the citizens, which is the primary duty of the government under the constitution.

Will the Grand Alliance between the two former rivals, PML-N and MQM, come up to the ‘Great Expectations’ of the suffering citizens? Will it force the government to end corruption, the increasing killings in Karachi and improve the system of governance?

Or is it just another attempt to push AZ and his Merry Men out of their Ivory Tower? Or will this GA end up as just another ‘Much ado about nothing’ charade, as in the past, only time will tell.

After 9/11, Pakistan had declared a war against terror. Perhaps it is time for the government to declare a war against corruption, target killings and the power crisis, which is crippling and killing our industries and making the lives of the citizens miserable and unbearable.

Until then, in the words of Gen. Musharraf, our former dictator, at the end of his resignation speech: ‘Pakistan Ka Khuda hafiz hai’ – ‘May Allah protect Pakistan’. 

Hamid Maker. (Email: trust@helplinetrust.org).

The question is not that could Pakistan have decided otherwise when America asked whether we were friend or foe, immediately after 9/11. The question is could we had made a better bargain for all the unimaginable facilities and cooperation we offered to America. In this connection, just recall what the US ambassador said (Musharraf agreed all our terms without conditions) in the cable to Washington, which really shames me even now and may be forever. Only a timid & selfish ruler can be so myopic. He made an abject surrender of a nuclear power. Later On he fell on the feet of the Indians by allowing them construction of barbed wire on not only on working boundary but even at LOC. Such things are only allowed at international borders as per law. Musharraf left Pakistan nowhere.

Napoleon Bonaparte once said on leadership that if you build an army of 100 lions and their leader is a dog, in any fight, the lions will die like a dog. But if you build an army of 100 dogs and their leader is a lion, all dogs will fight like a lion.

Lamhuan Nay Khata Key Thee Sadyoun Nay Saza Paei. (At times punishment goes till centuries for mistakes of a second).

Pakistani cricketer Ahmad Shahzad has proved with his fielding abilities that he is one of the best fielders  among all the ICC ODI world cup 2011 competing teams. In fact, Ahmad Shahzad is Jonty Rhodes of Pakistan. Moreover, Pakistani team management is totally wasting the nuclear weapon of the team Abdul Razaaq. His abilities are being utilized to the minimum advantage of the team. Ideally, either he should open the innings with Hafeez or go as one down batsman to make best use of the 1st ten overs power play, when only two fielders are outside the 30 yards circle.

Prediction for Today’s Match  India Vs England  Winner INDIA.

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.