South Asia Investor Review

Pakistan's Central Power Purchasing Agency's report shows that General Electric's 9HA-Class turbines produced only half of their capacity this August, according to Reuters. Power executives and government officials in the country said the GE turbines had operational issues like long outages and production delays. GE Turbine Problems: Bhikki Power Plant, Punjab, Pakistan The GE turbine problems affected three key plants – Bhikki of Punjab government and Balloki and Haveli Bahadur Shah of the federal government – with a total capacity of 3,600MW that are considered crucial to end  load shedding  within the ruling PMLN's 5-year term ending middle of 2018. Consequences For Pakistan: Pakistan's government is failing to deliver on its promise to end load-shedding this year because of serious issues with GE's 9HA-Class turbine. "It had terrible consequences because we lost a lot of power which would have come to the grid during the peak summer,"...

It is becoming increasingly clear that it is the total absence of financial management, not just insufficient installed generating capacity, that is the crux of the worsening energy problems in Pakistan. Riots have broken out as the Punjab, Pakistan's largest province, finds itself in the midst of the worst ever electricity crisis in the nation's history. The power shortfall has reached almost 9000 megawatts across the country, over half of the total demand of about 17000 MW. Many public and private power producers have shut down their power plants due to the suspension of fuel supply by Pakistan State Oil, the state-owned oil company, according to a report in the Express Tribune . The oil company is demanding payment of Rs. 155 billion in outstanding dues from the power producers before resuming fuel supply. The key players in this "circular debt" trap are the federal and provincial governments as the biggest deadbeats, the power distributors like LESCO and KESC, ...