It’s sad to see the jubilation on the arrival of a Turkish rental power ship in Karachi.
ISLAMABAD: It’s sad to see the jubilation on the arrival of a Turkish rental power ship in Karachi. The ship has a power plant which will produce 232 MW of electricity and this will be supplied to the city. But why are people and the media forgetting that this electricity is going to be very costly. To be precise, the people of Pakistan will pay $560 million over the next five years and this does not include the cost of the fuel that will be used to produce the power.
Even under Nepra’s own recent tariff determinations for independent power producers (IPP), a similar plant would cost roughly a million dollars per megawatt of electricity — so by that yardstick this option should cost no more than $232 million. IPP plants are better since, after 25 years, they are transferred to Pepco’s ownership. However, in this case, after the five-year rental period runs out, the Turkish ship will set sail once again. In fact, a recent report by the Asian Development Bank estimates that over this period, the owner of the plant will get a return of 306 per cent on his investment!
It’s possible that, as per media reports, this may be the world’s largest power-producing ship but it is also the world’s most expensive producer of power. And where will the money to pay this expensive power come from? From taxpayers like me and those who are reading this.
Surely a better option would have been to not have such a ship at all. I would beseech the Supreme Court to take note of this.
Mohammad Saleem Gauhar
Published in The Express Tribune, November 23rd, 2010.
