In a grandiose declaration, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Thursday proclaimed a substantial diminution in electricity tariffs for residential consumers, slashing rates by an impressive Rs7.41 per unit. Concurrently, industrial consumers will revel in an even more prodigious reduction of Rs7.59 per unit.
This audacious initiative, unveiled amidst a distinguished assemblage of cabinet luminaries and titans of industry, constitutes a pivotal component of the government’s indefatigable endeavors to ameliorate the economic burdens afflicting the Pakistani populace while simultaneously fortifying the nation’s fiscal foundations.
The Prime Minister’s pronouncement follows a supplication tendered to the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) beseeching a tariff attenuation, a plea that has now borne fruit in this momentous policy shift.
Addressing the illustrious gathering, PM Shehbaz elucidated, “The nation’s advancement is inextricably tethered to a prodigious reduction in electricity levies.” Extolling the virtuosity of his administration, he proclaimed, “This is no pedestrian accomplishment.”
The Premier regaled the audience with intricacies of renegotiated accords with Independent Power Producers (IPPs) and accentuated a panoply of seminal reforms that have engendered stupendous savings of Rs3,696 billion for the national coffers. “These funds were erstwhile destined for the coffers of the IPPs,” Shehbaz Sharif divulged.
Moreover, the Prime Minister expounded upon stratagems devised to grapple with the perennial conundrum of circular debt, prognosticating its extirpation within a quinquennium, contingent upon a metamorphosis in societal comportment.
This Rs7.59 per unit abatement constitutes a linchpin in the government’s grandiloquent scheme to truncate power tariffs, with antecedent propositions intimating reductions oscillating betwixt Rs6 and Rs8 per unit. Delineating the minutiae of the tariff slashes, PM Shehbaz explicated that the rate per unit, which towered at Rs58.35 in June 2024, has been whittled down to Rs48.19, effectuating a decrement of Rs10.3 per unit. He expressed sanguine aspirations that this supplementary alleviation would redound to the benefit of Pakistan’s citizenry.
The Prime Minister also castigated the perdurable scourge of electricity pilferage, estimating an astronomical annual forfeiture of approximately Rs600 billion attributable to this nefarious practice. He underscored that the pecuniary onus of these losses disproportionately encumbers the indigent, widows, and orphans, issuing an impassioned clarion call for measures to eradicate this malaise.
In his peroration, PM Shehbaz accentuated the indispensability of these reforms in proffering succor to the masses and ameliorating economic circumstances, pledging that these initiatives were undertaken with the paramount objective of assuaging the fiscal tribulations besetting consumers amidst escalating electricity costs.
