NEPRA Approves Electricity Price Hike by 1.6RS per unit. The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) has approved the increase in the price of electricity by Rs1.6 per unit. It emerged on Wednesday.
The decision was taken during a meeting held by the authority to discuss fuel price adjustment for the months of October and November, per sources.
The authority said during the period, the production cost of electricity was Rs3.95 per unit while the reference cost of electricity in September was Rs2.84 per unit.
In the case of fuel price adjustment for October, electricity prices will be increased by Rs0.29 per unit. As for November’s fuel price adjustment, the increase in electricity price will be by Rs0.77 per unit.
The increase in the price of electricity will impose an additional burden of Rs8.40 billion on consumers.
On December 14, NEPRA had approved a per unit hike of Rs1.11 in the power tariff as fuel readjustment “on account of variations in the fuel charges for the month of September 2020.”
The authority had said that the increase will be collected along with the electricity bills for the month of December. The hike, however, was not applicable to the electricity prices charged by K- Electric.
Reduce Energy Cost for Industrial sector
Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday announced a package under which small and medium enterprises as well as the industrial sector in general will be able to benefit from reduced energy costs.
The prime minister said that starting November 1, the additional electricity used by SMEs up to June 30, 2021, will be sold at 50% lower the cost.
“So whatever amount of electricity they use in addition to the level that they used last November, it will cost [half] of what it did previously,” he explained. “For example electricity that cost Rs16 per unit will now cost Rs8.”
He said that these rates will then be revised beyond the aforementioned date.
The prime minister also said that industries in general, even the large scale ones, will pay reduced electricity costs at all times, and the concept of “off-peak hours” will be redundant. “It will be as if its all off-peak hours.”
Country’s growth hinged on exports
Earlier, at the outset of his briefing, the premier regretted the high electricity costs in Pakistan owing to the expensive contracts signed by the previous governments.
“Our industries are therefore unable to compete with those that operate on 25% less expensive electricity,” he said.
The prime minister said that from 2013-2018 our exports, instead of rising, took a fall. “So we decided to raise our exports. We did this because a country’s growth is hinged on its exports.”