The government is hashing out a policy aimed at providing electricity to power users in winter at flat rates that will decrease their electricity bills substantially.
A senior official at the Energy Ministry (power division) on Tuesday told a parliamentary committee that the policy will be finalized this month and will be introduced in November. Presently, two different rates are applied by the government, one for peak hours and the other for off-peak hours which raised the end rate for the users.
For the winter season only, the government will impose a uniform flat rate throughout the day instead of the peak and off-peak hour rates and this will help reduce the electricity bills of the customers.
The official added that the government will guarantee cheaper electricity to the users despite the drop in the share of hydropower generation in December. He said multiple projects are coming online and at the present, the system has 35,000MW of available electricity.
Senator Nauman Wazir said that it was mandatory for the government to make power market in the country so the Discos should get profit. The committee was briefed that line losses for PESCO were more than NEPRA’s allowed limits and the consumers were being forced to pay for these losses.