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Govt to overcome power crisis to win Senate polls

Posted on: Wed October 12, 2011

ISLAMABAD - In a political move, the PPP-led coalition government has decided to control the power loadshedding till the Senate elections to be held in March next and in this regard the government is considering to divert the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) allocation to the circular debt.

Sources told TheNation on Tuesday that the government is seriously considering slashing the PSDP in order to solve the circular debt issue to some extent in order to pacify the public riots against the hours long power outages in the country. The government did not want public riots before the Senate elections to get political mileage, said the sources.

The government is in dire need of some Rs 100 to Rs 120 billion on an urgent basis for which it has no other option than to slash the PSDP. Apart from slashing PSDP, the government has also some other options including recovery of dues of power tariffs and imposition of new surcharges and taxes. However, according to the sources, the two options sans slashing PSDP are viable due to the time constraints and public agitation.

Therefore, the government has the best option to cut the PSDP. It is worth mentioning here that Finance Ministry had released Rs 10 billion to Pakistan State Oil (PSO) that drastically reduced the loadshedding duration.

The government is already looking reluctant to release funds for the PSDP during the first quarter (July-September) of the ongoing financial year 2011-2012, as it had released a meagre amount of Rs 44.7 billion for PSDP during the July-September period that is only 15 per cent of the overall allocation.

The sources said that with this pace the government would able to release only Rs 150 to Rs 180 billion during the current fiscal year against the overall allocation of Rs 290 billion for PSDP.

The government has fixed Rs 730 billion PSDP for the ongoing financial year 2011-2011 in which federal component is Rs 300 billion and Rs 430 billion is the provincial share. The government has allocated Rs 300 billion for the federal PSDP for the current fiscal year wherein Rs 10 billion is earmarked for the Earthquake Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Authority (ERRA) and Rs 290 billion for PSDP.

Courtesy: Nation