Electricity consumers to pay Rs1.25 more per unit from July to September

By Staff Reporter

ISLAMABAD: Power regulator NEPRA on Tuesday approved a quarterly tariff hike of Rs46.536 billion for the third quarter of the fiscal year 2022-23, to be recovered from most electricity consumers from July to September 2023.

The increase, which amounts to an average of Rs1.2489 per unit, is mainly due to higher capacity charges paid to independent power producers (IPPs) for electricity that was not used by the distribution companies (Discos) because of low demand or system constraints.

NEPRA said it had revised the tariff adjustment claim of Rs44.46 billion submitted by the Central Power Purchasing Agency (CPPA) on behalf of the Discos, after excluding some disputed or unverified amounts.

The tariff hike will not affect lifeline consumers who use less than 50 units per month, or the customers of K-Electric, the private utility that supplies power to Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city.

The regulator also said it had provisionally deducted a negative amount of Rs528.9 million from the CPPA claim, related to the capacity charges of KAPCO, a power plant that had agreed to operate without capacity charges from July 2021 onwards.

Another amount of Rs108.78 million, claimed by CPPA as fees paid to the Private Power and Infrastructure Board (PPIB) for nine IPPs, was also excluded from the tariff adjustment pending a separate decision by NEPRA.

The quarterly tariff adjustment mechanism is meant to account for variations in fuel costs, exchange rates, inflation and other factors that affect the cost of electricity generation and transmission in Pakistan.