PML-N also issued a white paper on RPPs, alleging the government of corruption and incompetence grossly lying with cooked statistics and magnifying issue of circular debt for approval of RPPs in haste, misleading Parliament and the public. Asif said that the government was slowly and steadily pushing the country towards financial disaster as there is a leakage of Rs 1,300 billion to Rs 1,500 billion in the system, adding that presently Pakistan Steel Mills, PIA, Pakistan Railways and Pepco were some examples of corrupt public entities.
He maintained there is a growing perception amongst the public that the PPP government artificially created the present shortage of electricity, resulting in nation-wide load shedding hampering trade and industry along with domestic consumers. The government manufactured this crisis to sell the RPPs policy. All these facts have been confirmed by the Asian Development Bank audit report which the government, despite its repeated promises, has failed to make public.
According to the Minister for Water and Power, not a single megawatt was contributed by the new RPPs by end -2009. Therefore, the contribution of new RPPs towards eliminating load shedding by end-2009 was zero, belying the government claim that RPPs are the only solution.
The energy generation deficit projected by PEPCO is misleading. Supply and demand figures provided by PEPCO to PPIB are different from those available on its own website. PEPCO has deliberately misled the nation to justify its master's haste in approving expensive power generation through gas and furnace oil-based RPPs-persistence and haste is normally synonymous with graft.
Despite having consistently failed to deliver required volume of gas to the existing power plants, the government has guaranteed supply to gas based RPPs. As a result, tax payers will pay capacity charges without utilising the to-be-installed capacity. For the gas based RPPs it is a case of money.
The PML-N whitepaper claimed "A study comparing the cost of energy generated by IPPs and RPPs shows that RPPs are 30 percent more expensive than IPPs. Higher consumer energy prices will further fuel inflation, hike interest rates and accelerate economic meltdown.
Inefficiency of RPPs will increase Pakistan's already burgeoning oil import bill, create a tectonic shift in the balance of payments equilibrium aggravating the crisis. RPP policy necessitates massive government borrowing. This will swell Pakistan's foreign and domestic debt; increase the percentage of the budget required to meet annual debt and reduce development funds.
Further criticising the RPPs plan, he said that the government has ignored international bidding, deliberately evaded transparency and bypassing both the ECC and the Federal Cabinet to issue letter of intent to a single party for a hydropower project valued at more than Rs 200 billion.
He said that the Federal Cabinet conveniently ignored the ECC directive to seek 200mmcfd gas from the petroleum ministry to generate 700MW from the existing IPPs to overcome power shortage. He added that the government guaranteed gas supply to new gas based RPPs at a time when it failed in meeting its obligations with the existing plants and is paying capacity charges or money for nothing to the owners.
What is the justification for the persistence and haste with which the RPPs were awarded and why lower cost and long-term solutions were not pursued, Khawaja questioned. Despite record levies on account of oil import in winter 2008-09, why did the government fail to pay the power generation companies in a timely manner to avoid load shedding allegedly due to non-payments or late payments, PML-N leader further questioned.