NE has lost count of the number of times government officials have set a date for the end of load-shedding in the country; in fact, people can be forgiven their scepticism when they hear, once again, the minister of state for water and power assert that the government will announce an end to load-shedding in November. It is not clear whether he means that the announcement will be made then, or that load-shedding itself will disappear in November. Either way, it is likely that the minister has jumped the gun. Power generation has increased in the past year, and he is right to point out that the threshold of 20,000MW has been crossed for the first time. But ending load-shedding is not about what peak power generation can hit. It is about straightening out the financials of power pricing, improving recoveries and strengthening transmission and distribution. Various government officials, from the last prime minister to the new one, as well as Punjab`s chief minister, have gleefully been cutting ribbons to inaugurate new power projects all year, but we are still waiting to see how far the governance of the power system has been improved. That is the lynchpin, and until that happens, no amount of incremental megawatts will help.

The minister should now be asked where our future plans for reform of the power sector stand. The last we heard the government was in the mood to bulldoze the power regulator, Nepra, and parcel out some of its crucial powers to the provincial governments and keep some for itself. More than raw megawatts, what matters here is the shape of the power sector that the government has in mind for the future. In the late 1990s, a set of reforms was being advanced that was transparent and that was supposed to be the framework for meeting future power needs. But this time we have no idea about what kind of a road map the government is following, and how much thinking has gone into preparing it. It seems to be a short-term push; adding a large amount of megawatts is the only thinking in town at the moment, and anything that stands in the way will be brushed aside. The minister owes the country an explanation about where things are headed in the power sector beyond the additional new generation capacity.