Nihara Bibi blamed Siyar Khan, Mullagori’s power grid supply in-charge, for diverting electricity to his own agency. PHOTO: FILE
Senator Sughra Imam, who heads the institutional capacity building cluster under the umbrella of FODP, and her team prepared the report in consultation with FODP partners. The aim of the cluster is to develop a strategy to help strengthen the country’s institutions in partnership with FODP countries.
In late 2009, five clusters were established including energy, trade and finance, security, development and institutional building.
The report asks the ministries and divisions to incorporate its recommendations into future memoranda of understanding (MoUs) for bilateral cooperation with development partners in general and FODP in particular.
Bilateral and multilateral technical assistance has at times helped in addressing immediate capacity issues but in a piecemeal manner. These efforts lacked sustainability and were not focused on capacity building through transfer of technology, skills and techniques, it says.
“Most of the assistance was in the form of ‘projects’ which resulted in dependence on external consultants in a time-bound assignment and this approach failed to develop the capacities of relevant stakeholders as the consultants usually worked in isolation and focused on completing and getting the acceptance of their assignments rather than developing capacities,” the report adds.
It observes that the donors found it easy to provide technical assistance and other financial support through what can best be termed as a “project approach”. These projects and activities are very heavily dependent on private consulting firms and individuals who are recruited for the purposes of the project.
“An important lesson learnt is that credible partners having the necessary skills, abilities and attitude, are more important and effective than the funding itself,” the report says.
It highlights the problems and key challenges in the energy sector which need to be addressed to overcome the energy crisis with the cooperation of FODP countries. It recommends long-term partnerships with counterpart institutions in both public and private sectors of FODP countries to help Pakistan overcome the crisis.
The report observes that one of the major challenges is the energy shortfall, adversely affecting economic growth. Over 30% of the people in the country have no access to electricity and approximately 80% of the population has no access to piped gas.
Electricity outages range from 8 to 20 hours per day in urban and rural areas. In 2011, average power demand was 16,596 megawatts while supply was 12,100MW.
The country’s energy mix has aggravated the crisis. Domestic sources of power, namely hydel, gas, coal and nuclear energy, constitute about 70% of the energy mix, but contribution of renewable energy is negligible.
“The remaining 30% of power produced is dependent on mostly imported fuels (such as furnace oil), aggravating the balance of payments problems,” the report adds.
Pakistan imports about 19 million tons of oil equivalent (MTOE) and 3 MTOE of coal every year at a combined cost of $10 billion. The Asian Development Bank estimates that if no action is taken to enhance domestic energy supplies, demand could jump to 56 MTOE by 2015, increasing the import bill to $38 billion.
The reliance on imported fuels also enhances costs of power production. Electricity prices have increased over 100% in the last four years.
Although the power sector is the largest consumer of natural gas, it is getting 33% of gas produced in the country, followed by the industrial sector at 23.8% and households 18.3%.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 16th, 2013.
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