Power consumers to bear brunt of IMF deal

The country's power regulator--the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra)--has added exorbitant "capacity charges" to the cost of electricity production, a move that will significantly inflate the electric bills of the consumers, official documents have revealed.

According to the Nepra documents, the average production cost of electricity is Rs6.73 per unit. However, after addition of Rs16.22 per unit capacity charges, the per unit price of electricity will reach Rs22.95 per unit.

Nepra estimates that 124.86 billion units of electricity will be generated in this fiscal year.

At the original rate, the cumulative cost of producing 124.86 billion units of electricity production will be Rs801.25 billion. However, Nepra has added a whopping Rs2,025 billion to this cost as capacity charges.

The documents revealed that the cost of producing electricity from imported coal is Rs16.71 per unit.

The price of electricity generated through imported coal has, however, been set at Rs40.34 per unit by including Rs23 per unit capacity charges.

Similarly, the price of electricity generated through furnace oil has been set at Rs48.56 per unit while the price of electricity made from the liquefied natural gas (LNG) has been set at Rs51.42 per unit after including capacity charges.

Due to inclusion of these charges, the power consumers will now pay an additional amount in billions of rupees.