Net hydel profits: WAPDA fails to pay up for two years straight

K-P government owed more than Rs0.88 billion.

PESHAWAR:

The Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) has failed to pay net hydel profits to the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government for two consecutive years.

Wapda is liable to pay Rs620 million every year in net hydel profits through monthly installments of Rs51.7 million. A large fraction of this money finances the province’s annual development projects as mentioned in the fiscal year objectives, an official source in the Civil Secretariat of Peshawar told The Express Tribune.

This amount has not been paid for fiscal years 2011-12 and 2012-13. For this year alone, the amount for five months since the new financial year began has accumulated to Rs258.3 million.

The total amount due, combined with last year, stands at Rs 878.3 million, said an official familiar with the matter.

The financial secretary at the civil secretariat, Sahibzada Saeed, confirmed the amount of unpaid dues. In reply to a question, Saeed said that development projects will be affected in the long run due to non-payments of net hydel profits.

Besides the Rs620 million that has to be paid annually, an additional Rs110 billion must also be paid to the K-P government due to an arbitration agreement between the government and Wapda in 2009, said an official said. This amount represents the accumulation of Wapda dues from previous years. Saeed said that the Rs110 billion will be paid in five years  through installments of Rs25 billion. This amount can also be paid in monthly installments of Rs2.08 billion.  So far, Wapda has paid Rs60 billion towards the total arbitration amount, out of which Rs10 billion was recently paid for the five months of the current fiscal year. Another official familiar with matter said that the installments were not paid for the first three months but the amount was released later. Saeed confirmed this, saying “Now the money is coming regularly after the matter was taken up during a high-level meeting.”

Published in The Express Tribune, November 24^th, 2012.