THE HALFAX HEIMDALL AUGUR

Privatising Discos won’t be enough <p>YEARS before I joined K-Electric, I led a large industrial company facing a choice many Pakistani manufacturers know well: keep relying on grid electricity or invest in captive generation. We chose captive power because it made better commercial sense than buying from the grid at prevailing tariffs and operating conditions.</p> <p>Years later, as COO Distribution at K-Electric, I saw the same issue from the other side. That experience taught me a critical lesson: Pakistan’s power sector is not only challenged by consumers it cannot collect from, but increasingly by the consumers who can pay.</p> <p>As the government moves to privatise electricity distribution companies (Discos), the debate has focused on losses. Can private owners improve collections, reduce theft, and run utilities more efficiently? Those are important questions, but they risk obscuring a deeper one. What happens when a utility steadily loses the customers that make it financially viable?</p> <figure class='media w-full sm:w-1/2 media--right media--embed media--uneven' data-original-src='https://www.dawn.com/news/1949314'> <div class='media__item media__item-…

Privatising DISCOs is agenda item number one. Maybe it shouldn't be June 19, 2024 Everyone seems agreed on the privatisation of our DISCOS. But has anyone bothered to look at what is best for these companies and the consumers? Taimoor Hassan June 19, 2024 It seems of all the debates that are constantly raging in the corridors of ‘power’, the one issue that seems settled is the privatisation of our distribution companies (DISCOs). In recent times, it seems everyone across the political divide, within the bureaucracy, and other stakeholders have fallen in line that the solution to our DISCOs is to privatise them. The DISCOs themselves have a long and interesting history that this publication has covered in the past. The basic problem on our hands is that these distribution companies have faced major losses and have been far from efficiently managed. For example, one of the biggest problems in particular has been the theft of electricity and how difficult it is to make recoveries from consumers. Does the answer lay with the private sector? The government would have you believe yes, but when the government itself has been unable to thwart electricity theft with law enforcement at…

Privatising Discos: tread with caution - Opinion - Business Recorder Opinion Print edition: 2023-10-10 Privatising Discos: tread with caution Published October 10, 2023 Updated October 10, 2023 06:49am Save Saved 9 min comment 1 Comment By Salman Amin Add BRecorder as a trusted source on Google On 13th July 2023, IMF’s Executive Board while approving US$3 billion Stand-by Arrangement (SBA) for Pakistan emphasised adherence to fiscal discipline, progress in energy sector’s structural reforms and better SOEs’ governance. Underperforming DISCOs continue to pose a challenge to all the three fundamentals highlighted in the SBA. Recently, the caretaker Finance Minister, in a press briefing, referred to major loss-making SOEs. Of top ten loss-making entities, four were Discos with Qesco leading with a loss of Rs 108 billion. Certainly, it does not require an IFI to nudge us on a matter that is draining the economy and consumers alike that has been persistently highlighted in annual reports by SBP, Nepra, Finance Division and Privatisation Commission (PC). The SBA terms are a reiteration of the urgency to reform the power sector for macroeconomic viability and to address the socio-politic…

Article of The Day - Discos Privatisation Plan Won't Succeed Without ... Article of The Day - Discos Privatisation Plan Won't Succeed Without Market Deregulation AI-enhanced title and description Article of The Day - Discos Privatisation Plan Won't Succeed Without Market Deregulation AI-enhanced title and description OF THE DAYPublished in Business Recorder, Jan 7th, 2025 After PIA’s successful privatisation, all Distribution is the most complex businesseyes are on power distribution in the chain and, without an overall sectorcompanies (the so-called discos), overhaul and a regulatory reset, there is littlewhich are at the top of the active privatisation hope of any success. The problem is that thelist. Consultants have been appointed and same people deployed in governmentmillions of dollars have been spent. regulatory and operating agencies (such as thepower ministry, PPIB, CPPA-G, NTDC, NepraHowever, these assets lack investorand the discos) are making the roadmap forinterest, as there is no clarity on the regulatoryenergy sector deregulation and discos’…

Privatizing Power: Will DISCO Sales Help Consumers? - Pakistan Today May 20, 2026 Pakistan’s move to privatize three DISCOs follows K-Electric’s messy history. The key question: will lower line losses enable fairer tariffs—or trigger clashes over profits and regulation? Editorial May 20, 2026 Will the privatization of three DISCOs help the consumer? The privatization of three electricity distribution companies will carry on the process that was started by the privatization of K-Electric, the country’s only DISCO with its own generation stations, which made the process somewhat different. The process of privatizing K-Electric turned out to be messy, first because the original buyer, the Shanghai Electric Power Company sold out to the Abraaj Group of Arif Naqvi, which went down in flames after Mr Naqvi was indicted for fraud. Only recently did Shehryar Chishti manage to get control of K-Electric after disentangling it from the train wreck Abraaj Group had become. The innovative approach to generation that K-Electric is taking is reflected in the Keenjhar Lake project, whereby a solar plant would supply nearby industries 500 MW of electricity, which K-Electric has agreed to take…

Govt offers 20pc returns to woo buyers <p>ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will offer a lucrative 18-20 per cent return, along with complete freedom for investors to buy and sell electricity in a competitive market, as it targets the privatisation of three of the most viable distribution companies (Discos) in October, November and December.</p> <p>“We will provide in the transaction structure terms and conditions that protect consumer interests but also ensure investor comfort. We will do it upfront as part of transaction structure, before bidding (of the first Disco), otherwise privatisation will not be possible,” Prime Minister’s Adviser on Privatisation Muhammad Ali told Dawn after a meeting of the Privatisation Commission board, which approved a restructuring plan for Faisalabad Electric Supply Company – the first of five Discos to be sold in 2026-27.</p> <p>Mr Ali said the Privatisation Commission had completed domestic soft marketing of three Discos of Faisalabad, Gujranwala and Islamabad in seven major cities, with chambers of commerce and industry and business houses and would now be expanding abroad mainly to Saudi Arabia, China and Turkiye and approaching other Middle Eastern capit…

Discos' privatisation: It's never too late - Editorials - Business Recorder Editorials Print edition: 2023-01-13 Discos’ privatisation: It’s never too late Published January 13, 2023 Updated January 13, 2023 06:05am Save Saved 4 min comment 1 Comment EDITORIAL: Prime Minster Shehbaz Sharif has formed a committee to find legal ways to create space for participation by the private sector in power distribution companies (Discos). One cannot emphasise enough on the need for privatisation and deregulation of Discos. And it is a welcome move that the government is considering reducing legal bottlenecks. However, more important is the commercial viability and what is in for the private sector investors. The only private company in the power distribution sector is K-Electric. Its performance since privatisation stands out in terms of reduction of losses and improvement in services. The T&D losses have reduced from 34.2 percent in 2005 at the time of privatisation to 15.3 percent, more than half. This doesn’t happen without major investment in the system: the company invested $4.1 billion in the value chain since privatisation to achieve this result. The company has been able to digitise a…

Will Privatising Pakistan's Power Distribution Companies End The Sector ... Share: The government has announced a plan to privatise various public sector companies including the power generation (GENCOs) and distribution companies (DISCOs). In the short run, the plan envisages privatisation of electricity distribution companies IESCO and GEPCO followed by FESCO. In the long run, it seeks to privatise the loss-making GENCOs and DISCOs. The plan seeks to sequence privatisation of efficient utilities first, and then move on to the loss-making ones. The obvious motive behind the plan is to address financial woes caused by inefficiencies in the power sector. Unfortunately, however noble and well-intentioned, Pakistan’s privatisation experience of power utilities has brought more trouble than benefits! The privatisation drive of energy sector entities and assets since the early 1990s was partly driven by political economy, but largely motivated by international conditions that favoured divestment of public resources from the energy sector. Ever since, the state has followed a path to a fully privatised sector, regulated by a regulatory authority (NEPRA). The institutional ecosystem had …

QOSHE - Privatising Discos won't be enough - Asif Saad YEARS before I joined K-Electric, I led a large industrial company facing a choice many Pakistani manufacturers know well: keep relying on grid electricity or invest in captive generation. We chose captive power because it made better commercial sense than buying from the grid at prevailing tariffs and operating conditions. Years later, as COO Distribution at K-Electric, I saw the same issue from the other side. That experience taught me a critical lesson: Pakistan’s power sector is not only challenged by consumers it cannot collect from, but increasingly by the consumers who can pay. As the government moves to privatise electricity distribution companies (Discos), the debate has focused on losses. Can private owners improve collections, reduce theft, and run utilities more efficiently? Those are important questions, but they risk obscuring a deeper one. What happens when a utility steadily loses the customers that make it financially viable? Most reform discussions focus on bad load, electricity that is stolen, unpaid for, or hard to recover. Yet the sector may be overlooking an equally important problem — the gradual loss of…