ZAHEER ABBASI

ISLAMABAD: The government continued to face tough questions on payment of Rs480 billion to the power sector to clear circular debt even after four years; however, it succeeded to persuade a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Finance to postpone its decision for two weeks regarding referring the matter to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB).

A meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Finance presided over by Senator Saleem Mandviwalla was requested by the Secretary Power that ministry be given two weeks time to settle the audit paras on idle capacity, etc, when the committee was almost about taking the decision to send the case to the NAB for investigation. “We will send the matter of circular debt payment of Rs480 billion to the NAB if we get no reply within two weeks,” said the committee chairman.

On the issue of referring the matter to the NAB, the committee was equally divided among those in favour of it and those against it. The chairman’s vote was the deciding factor, however, on the request of secretary power, he decided to give a last opportunity to the Power Division to sort out the matter of audit objection of payment of Rs32 billion in idle/unutilized capacity, the issues in the matter of heat capacity of Independent Power Units and payment of 2.7 billion in the fuel capacity in consultation with AGPR and other stakeholders.

The chairman of the committee also commented, “Secretary Sahib I am very sorry if your department is searching for papers two years down the road then Power Sector should be outsourced to a third party.” Mandviwalla said that there are glaring contradictions in the statements of various departments of Ministry of Power on the audit paras of Rs32 billion payment of idle capacity to the IPPs, and on other audit paras.

Senator Kamil Ali Agha suggested that the case should be sent to the NAB and FIA for investigation because Power Ministry has not provided satisfactory replies to the main committee and sub-committee constituted on the audit paras.

Senator Mohsin Aziz suggested that main committee should get verbatim of sub-committee’s meeting to check the conflicting statements of the representatives of Ministry of Power. He said that issue of payment made in 2013 was still unresolved in 2017. He said the committee should throw the sub-committee report or trash it so that no one could ask the question about making payment in emergency by bypassing the Accountant General of Pakistan Revenue (AGPR).

The senator stated that Ministry of Water and Power officials have been making conflicting statements on the issue idle capacity. They have stated during the meetings of sub-committee that capacity was there (with IPPS) but they (the government) could not lift it and now they are stating that no payment was made against unutilized power. Senator Osman Saifullah stated that terms and conditions in the agreements are in favor of IPPs and the government can renegotiate them.

The chairman of the committee in consultation of the committee members decided if the ministry doesn’t succeed in giving a satisfactory response to resolve these long outstanding issues, the matter will be referred to an agency for inquiry. They also expressed serious concerns over contradicting statements over the course of time by Central Power Purchasing Agency in the meetings of sub-committee and Standing Committee.

The meeting was held under the chairmanship of Senator Saleem Mandviwalla here at the Parliament House on Tuesday and was attended among others by Senators Mohsin Aziz, Mohsin Leghari, Ayesha Raza, Murtaza Wahab, Osman Saifullah, Saud Majeed and Kamil Ali Agha, Minister for Energy Owais Lagahri, secretary power and other officials.