LAHORE: Zaki Aijaz, Vice President and Regional Chairman of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI), has called for urgent action from the task force on Independent Power Producers (IPPs) and Pakistan’s Power Sector Reforms to hold the country’s 40 IPPs accountable. In a statement on Friday, Aijaz underscored the increasing frustration among the public and business sectors over soaring electricity costs, which he attributed to unfavorable power purchase agreements with IPPs.
Aijaz criticized the government’s substantial payments to non-operational or underutilized IPPs, highlighting that some plants did not generate any electricity from January to March but still received billions in payments. He revealed that these IPPs, despite investing just Rs50 billion, have collected Rs400 billion from the government, burdening the public with exorbitant tariffs. He warned that with 25% of the industry already shut down, the current Rs2,000 billion annual capacity charges extracted from the public are unsustainable and are deepening Pakistan’s economic crisis.
