Staff Reporter
Karachi
Electricity demand, which has tanked due to industrial slowdown, may never go back to pre-COVID-19 levels, and recovery will not be visible before 2022, said Zubair Mahmood, Lead Policy at the Central Power Purchasing Agency (CPPA-G), while speaking at a webinar on the “Impact of COVID-19 on the Electricity Distribution Sector in Pakistan and the Way Forward”.
He said that Pakistan has already witnessed around 6-7% reduction in electricity demand over the past three months predicting that this could further reduce by 15% before reversal. During his presentation Zubair Mahmood also estimated that the impact on the power sector has been approximately PKR 40 billion in just 3 months, only on account of the shift in energy demand from profitable customers (like industries) towards less profitable segments including residential, elaborating that, “On one side it is squeezing the profitable categories and on the other side it is enhancing the loss-making categories. From both sides the power sector is in a very tight situation. Until the time the financial gap is bridged by an injection from the Government of Pakistan, there will be a financial crunch for the power sector which will affect the delivery of services to the customer.”
The webinar was organized by Women in Energy Pakistan (WIE), a professional network for female professionals in the energy sector of Pakistan and a strategic partner of the World Bank’s WePOWER regional network. It discussed the impact of the global pandemic on the electricity distribution sector in Pakistan, and solutions to ensure sectoral sustainability during and after COVID-19.
It gathered together a distinguished panel of notable minds from the Pakistan power sector including Chairman NEPRA Tauseef Farooqi, CMCO K-Electric Mahreen Khan, Lead Policy CPPA-G Zubair Mahmood as well as international energy experts such as Saadia Qayyum, Energy Specialist at World Bank and Chair at Women in Energy and Anthony Granville Senior Energy Expert at the World Bank, and was moderated by Seher Abbas Haider, Energy Consultant at International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Chair at Women in Energy.
Chairman of the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) Tauseef Farooqi said that reducing the cost of power was critical in any effort to limit the impact of the current crisis and suggested that increasing competition in the sector while doing away with centralized governance was the best way forward.
He said, “As a regulator, I want this sector deregulated as much as possible. Any recovery will only be built around fixing the economy and industrial recovery is a central pillar in this recovery, which can only be possible by reducing the cost of doing business by reducing the cost of power.”
