The cost of ignoring the Shibli Report
The power sector in Pakistan has operated on the assumption that supply creates its own demand
The writer is a senior political economist based in Islamabad. He can be reached at [email protected]
While the outgoing year left almost nothing to celebrate, the new year opens its account with the chilling news of a series of spikes in the electricity tariff agreed with the IMF to administer “old wine in an old bottle” to the problem of ever-rising circular debt. This follows the recent admission by the Prime Minister that the PTI was not prepared to deal with the complexities of the energy sector, particularly the circular debt. Having written on the Shibli Report in these columns on October 5, 2018, the admission came as a surprise. Just about the start of the PTI government, Senator Shibli Faraz of the PTI, as head of a Senate committee on circular debt, had succeeded in producing a consensus report well before the present game of thrones