Centre and provinces owe Rs160bn to Pepco

ISLAMABAD, April 14: Minister for Water and Power Naveed Qamar informed the National Assembly on Thursday that the federal and provincial governments owed Rs160 billion to the Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco). In a written reply to a question raised by Nighat Parveen Mir of the PML-N, the minister said the Sindh government was the biggest debtor with Rs100 billion, including Rs63 billion of the Karachi Electric Supply Company, outstanding against it. He said Khyber Pakhtunkhwa owed Rs20.35 billion, Punjab government Rs7.99 billion and Balochistan Rs3.84 billion to Pepco. Receivables of Rs4.6 billion from the federal government have been put under three heads; departments (Rs1.33 billion), agencies (Rs1.4 billion) and defence forces (Rs1.8 billion). The federal government owed Rs4.439 billion under different subsidies; Rs960 million for agriculture tube-well, AJK receivables Rs402 million and Rs3.07 billion subsidy for the agriculture sector in Balochistan. A separate payment of Rs11.95 billion was due from all provincial governments under the head of agriculture and tube-well subsidy led by the Balochistan government with Rs6.1 billion followed by Punjab Rs5.5 billion, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Rs126 million and Sindh Rs47 million. He said that during a meeting presided over the finance secretary in January the provincial chief secretaries were asked to make strenuous efforts for the payment of dues and the provincial finance secretaries were being pursued for the recovery from the major defaulting departments. Mr Qamar said the distribution companies had been made to sign performance contracts wherein all companies were required to report their progress regarding recovery of arrears to the ministry of water and power on a regular basis. On the question of whether the government had written off any payment owed by any department to Pepco, the minister's response was in the negative. In reply to a supplementary question, he said the recovery of outstanding dues had been a thorny issue for the past three years but the government was keeping a consistent pressure on all defaulting departments.