Islamabad : Solution For Load Shedding

[Salman]

Solution For Load Shedding

‘Fed govt to generate power; provinces should distribute’

* Addressing a book launch Dr Amjad says all key decisions related to power sector are being taken at the level of CCI



ISLAMABAD: As an out of the box solution, distribution of power sector among federal and provincial governments is the only solution for overcoming power crisis in the country, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Finance Dr Shahid Amjad informed participants here on Thursday.

The federal government should keep the role of policy making and generation along with its transmission to distribution companies and all the distribution companies be handed over to respective provinces.

It’s up to the provinces to run these distribution companies on their own or privatise them and arrange their efficient functioning through private sector, he said this while addressing as chief guest at the book launch titled ‘Capturing The Demographic Dividend in Pakistan’ arranged by UNFPA and Population Council at a local hotel.

He said that all the key decisions related to power sector are being taken at the level of Council of Common Interests where all four provinces and energy sector need to be handed over to the provinces as almost all the physical infrastructure is within the jurisdiction of the provinces.

He was of the opinion that health, education and partial energy sectors should be handed over to the provinces as they are the main stakeholders in these sectors. Financial well being of disabled, old and orphans is the prime duty of the provinces.

He expressed his serious concern over de-industrialisation of Pakistan and said that despite passing of many decades we don’t have industrial policy in the country. While quoting the example of China and India, he was of the opinion that these countries have corrected their trade and tariff policies, which helped them achieve rapid industrialisation in their countries. He said that Pakistan’s trade regime is quite good and we need to develop a good tariff regime so as to achieve the rapid industrialisation in the country.

Highlighting the negative impact of the in-consistency of policies in the country, stop-go, stop-go attitude at the national level during the last 20 years we have lost our two decades as well as 2.0 percent gross domestic product loss each year.

He termed the book as significant work on population issues and said that it demands us to fill in policy gaps and play due role in reaping the demographic dividends, opportunities available with the country.

He informed that federal government had pledged for financing few national level health related projects including Lady Health Workers till 2004-15 and now it’s not clear that federal government would be able to continue financing such programmes beyond 2014-15 or these programmes would also be handed over to the provinces.

Former principle adviser to the Ministry of Finance Saquib Shrirani while commenting on the book said that it provides us a roadmap to reap the available opportunities of demographic dividends. He said population is a big challenge as well as opportunity for us and if we are able to meet their basic health, education and population planning needs we would be able to reap the benefits of demographic dividends. Without proper family planning, we shall not be able finance their education, health, water and energy needs as this would require us to make additional spending for providing such facilities to them. Former federal minister Javed Jabbar also highlighted the importance of family planning and meeting growing population challenges by saying that for this purpose an institutional response from the state would be necessary.