Electricity price enhanced by Rs 1.27 per unit: Asad Umer

ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Asad Umar on Thursday announced an increase of Rs 1.27 per unit in the price of electricity, stressing that this was below the hike recommended by NEPRA.

Umar sitting alongside other federal ministers at a news conference here said NEPRA in its evaluation had recommended a fee unit increase of Rs 3.82. “This determination was completed in August before the PTI government came into power. According to the decision taken in yesterday’s ECC meeting and approved by the cabinet, the price increase will be Rs 1.27, not Rs 3.82.”

The finance minister confirmed that households consuming less than 300 units of electricity would not be impacted by the increase as their rates would remain unchanged. The tariff for domestic consumers using 300-700 units of electricity would see an increase of 10 per cent, while households consuming over 700 units will experience an increase of 15 per cent.

There has been no increase in the tariff for commercial consumers using less than 5kV, which is around 95 per cent of the commercial user base, he said.

Umar explained that Pakistan’s economy had weakened because of massive losses in the energy sector, and the revised tariff was part of the government’s efforts to address the issue.

On Pakistan’s approach to the International Monetary Fund, Umar said it was very easy to sign the IMF documents but the government was working on securing alternate means of funding. IMF contracts impact the entire financial system [of a country], he said.

Also, the government has decided to install meters on transformers to identify power theft.

Federal minister for power division Omar Ayub said that these measures began from Islamabad and Lahore. “The estimate for power theft is rs250 billion, while amount for payable bills have reached 800 billion”, he said.

The minister said that the public is facing this burden of the bills.