Do Not Pay Your Bills, Wait, Govt to Issue New Electricity Bills

The government has requested that electricity consumers with the consumption of fewer than 200 units to not pay their bills as the Federal Government has directed the relevant Discos to issue new bills with reduced Fuel Cost Adjustment (FCA). The announcement was made by the Federal Minister of Finance, Mr. Miftah Ismail during a recent press conference in Islamabad. He said that under Prime Minister’s relief to the lower segment of the population, the government will issue new electricity bills to all consumers who consumed less than 200 units. He explained that the bill prices had increased due to the production of electricity from expensive fuel during the months of June and July. Miftah said that the consumers who have already submitted their bills will be compensated in the month of September, whereas the date has been extended to 31 August for those consumers who have not submitted their bills yet. He further said that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has formed a committee to decide the exemption of consumers between 200-300 units and, likely, they will also be excluded from the FCA. The Minister claimed that the decision had been imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), however, the government had only approved the addition of FCA in electricity bills after providing exemption to 60 percent of the households, or 17.1 million connections. Commenting on the recent visit to Qatar, he said that Qatar had agreed to provide a $3 billion investment in Pakistan. Qatar is interested in the LNG plants, terminals and the government’s solar plant project, he added. Regarding the rumours of the sale of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) and the Roosevelt Hotel, Miftah negated the claims and said that Qatar had only shown interest in investing in the aforementioned projects. The Gulf Country has also discussed the possibility of purchasing shares of Pakistani companies. The Minister claimed that with the investment from Qatar, a $1 billion investment from Saudi Arabia and a $1 billion investment from UAE, the government had met the IMF’s condition of financing the external financing gap of $4 billion. He assured the media that the IMF programme would be approved on the upcoming Monday, 29 August with the transfer of a $1.17 billion tranche to Pakistan.