The meeting observed that billions of rupees of electricity bills stood unpaid to date, placing the national economy under a tremendous strain. Private and public sector entities and domestic consumers are among defaulters. The meeting agreed that the situation could not be allowed to go on any further. The Finance Minister asked the Chairman NAB and Secretary Water & Power to devise a well-co-ordinated strategy towards recovery of all outstanding bills as early as possible. The Discos would provide all relevant details to NAB through the Ministry of Water and Power.
He said that instead of outsourcing recovery of bills to private companies, it was better to utilise the services of a well-established organisation like NAB which previously was carrying out this exercise. An official of Finance Ministry said the poor performance of power sector is conspicuous from a high number of outstanding electricity bills against public and private sector consumers. He further stated that power sector receivables against public and private consumers escalated to Rs 581 billion by the end October 2014, and the situation paints a bleak picture of the sector.
Power sector remains in crisis due to low recovery by distribution companies and government's failure to implement reforms. The officials added that as far as tariff differential on account of notified and implemented tariff is concerned, the gap is being bridged substantially through allocation of subsidy in the budget, but circular debt remains a challenge due to a high incidence of outstanding receivables and high line losses. He maintained the recovery of power distribution companies against every 100 units has declined to 67 units. Although, the then finance minister, Hafeez Sheikh, and incumbent finance minister Ishaq Dar have spearheaded the power sector reforms during the last seven years, the performance of power sector has gone from bad to worse and their failure to undertake necessary reforms have heavily cost the consumers and budget. Chairman NAB, Chaudhry Qamar Zaman, Secretary Finance, Dr Waqar Masood, Secretary Water and Power, Younus Dhaga, Advisor Finance Division, Rana Asad Amin and other senior officials attended the meeting.