Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry has slammed the government decision to impose 60 paisa/unit additional surcharge in monthly power tariffs from January 2015 and called for urgent withdrawal of this increase as it would prove detrimental to the growth of business activities and make the lives of common man miserable.

 

Muzammil Hussain Sabri, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that in the wake of hefty decline in international oil prices, business community was demanding for proportional cut in power tariffs, but instead of accepting our demand, government has opted to increase the price of electricity in order to appease the IMF, but ignored the fact that this move would further enhance the cost of doing business and bring more problems, especially to the poor people.   

 

He said the NEPRA had slashed power tariffs by Rs.2.97/unit for November 2014 under monthly fuel price adjustment, but the government has deprived the consumers of sufficient relief by passing on to them only Rs.2.37/unit, which was unjustified. 

 

He said the power consumers were already paying huge surcharge in the range of 50 paisa to Rs.1.50/unit along with experiencing long hours of load shedding and with the imposition of 60 paisa/unit additional surcharge, they will now have to pay more than Rs.2/unit surcharge. Thus they would have to bear the additional burden of Rs.4-billion to Rs.6 billion every month which would greatly squeeze their purchasing power in addition to badly affecting the trade and industrial activities in the country.

 

Muzammil Sabri said our country was in dire need of reviving the economy and the best way to achieve this goal was to facilitate the growth of business activities by making maximum possible reduction in the cost of doing business. However, the existing average power tariff in Pakistan including GST and CED was around Rs16.95/unit, which was highest in the region while the average power tariff in India and Bangladesh for the same unit was reportedly Rs7.36 and Rs5.47 respectively putting our exporters at a great disadvantage to regional competitors.

 

He said country’s dependence on furnace oil for power generation has greatly enhanced the cost of doing business apart from crushing the poor people. He urged the government to review the pro-furnace oil policy and make all possible efforts to exploit the cheaper alternatives for electricity production in order to decrease production cost, facilitate growth of business activities, attract more investment, promote exports and reduce inflation bringing more relief to the general public.