Tall claims on power

Private Pakistani and non-Chinese investors are investing in expanding power production in Pakistan.

We really wish that cabinet ministers in the Nawaz Administration would stop issuing statements promising the kind of progress that they know is very difficult to achieve, if not outright impossible. The notion that Chinese companies will invest in setting up 22,000 megawatts of power generation capacity in Pakistan seems outlandish at best. When this commitment was made, and why it was not made publicly, is a question that Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal left unanswered. Nor did he address the very real concerns that most observers have about how this is possible.

The first question that comes to mind is where exactly these plants will be set up. Chinese firms have already shied away from investing in coal mining and coal-fired thermal power projects in Thar. The PPP remains in power in Sindh. If Chinese companies were unwilling to invest two years ago under the same provincial government, why would they invest now? A change in Islamabad is not enough to convince most investors. And if the government truly believes that any company would invest in coal-fired power in Punjab without major improvements in the country’s railway infrastructure, they have not done their homework. Coal is simply not economical when transported by trucks. The only way to ship it across land is by rail and the appalling state of the Pakistan Railways all but precludes that possibility.

The truth is that private investors — mostly Pakistani, but also a few non-Chinese foreign firms — are already investing in expanding power production in Pakistan by a figure only slightly less than the minister claimed. Chinese companies are part of the equation but not all of it. The minister needs to be truthful with his facts and figures.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 17^th, 2014.

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