A brighter future

It is possible that once again Karachi will be the City of Lights. The Shanghai Electric Power company of China has laid out a $9 billion plan of investment following its recent acquisition of shares and the management control of the K-Electric company, which is the power utility which supplies electricity to the largest city in Pakistan. The key meeting that oversaw the transfer was chaired by the Minister of Water and Power Khawaja Muhammed Asif and other ministers from the power sector. For the first time the general public is able to see what the new owners have in store which includes adding value to the infrastructure which is going to include improvements to transmission, distribution and generation, all of which are due for an overhaul and upgrade.

The new owners have bought into a successful utility that has turned around in many respects the rolling disaster that was the power supply of the metropolis. In 2012, it turned a profit for the first time in 17 years since which it has demonstrated sustained growth, but the undertaking needed to be taken to the next level if greater potential is to be achieved, hence the protracted negotiations with Shanghai Electric which is itself controlled by the State Power Investment Corporation that is a Fortune 500 company listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Power utilities are becoming global entities, vast multinationals, and the latest move by Shanghai Electric is part of their own expansion and may be seen in the context of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the many linked developments that accompany that project. Karachi is the national economic powerhouse, and the hunger for power is going to grow. The work done by K-Electric is the foundation on which Shanghai Electric will build and the entire enterprise is in line with the macro development agenda of the current government. Any caveats around the deal may point to a lack of transparency and a creeping Chinese hegemony in Pakistan in all matters developmental. A brighter Karachi? Not such a dim prospect after all.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 8^th, 2016.

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