Govt to Extend Relief to Agriculture and Domestic Electricity Consumers

Islamabad: The government has decided to pass on reduction in electricity rates on account of fuel adjustment to agriculture sector and domestic consuming using up to 300 units per month.

Ministry of Power Division has issued a letter to the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) to implement the decision.

Minister for power Division Owais Leghari in a letter to the power regulator called for passing on relief to the agriculture consumers and domestic consumers using up to 300 units per month.

In a letter, power minister said that the Economic coordination committee (ECC) of the Cabinet had issued the following policy guidelines on 21st May 2015 t that any negative adjustment on account of monthly FCA will not be passed on to the Domestic

NA body Concerned over Hefty Electricity Bills

consumers who have subsidized electricity tariff.

The power regulator in its FCA decision on June 24, 2015 decided the non-applicability of negative FCA to non-TOU domestic consumers up to 300 units.

Further, the Authority’s decision for non-applicability of negative FCA to agriculture

consumers is already in effect since November 2010.

The Ministry of Energy vide letter dated 09th June 2021 has filed Policy Guidelines for

Re-Targeting Power Subsidies in future. In line with the policy guidelines, the Authority in its

decision dated 23rd September 2021, has created new domestic protected and non-protected non-TOU consumers categories.

Since then, the tariffs for the non-protected category have been increased gradually in line with the government policy.

The minister said that following the tariff rationalization, continuing the policy of not passing the negative FCA to non-protected domestic consumers and agriculture consumers may not

corroborate with the principle behind earlier decisions.

Accordingly, it is requested that the Authority may reconsider the non-applicability of

negative FCA to non-protected domestic and agriculture categories,” energy minister said.