The Federal Government is in the process of finalising the new Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) and Arbitration Agreement with Karachi Electric (KE).
This was revealed by Minister for Energy, Hammad Azhar via a tweet where he said: “I am glad to announce that the Federal Government and KE have today (Sunday) agreed upon principles to resolve most of their long-standing disputes regarding additional supply, payment procedure and subsidy disbursement. We will be swiftly moving towards signing of a new PPA.”
This PPA had been surrounded by controversy since the beginning. In the month of April 2021 the Managing Director, Investments of Saudi Arabia’s Aljomaih Holdings Co, Abdulaziz Hamad Aljomaih penned down a letter to the Prime Minister Imran Khan in which he accused Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Power and Petroleum, Tabish Gauhar of making deliberate attempts to disrupt KE’s issues settlement process. The accusations were vehemently denied by Tabish Gauhar.
Earlier in May the government sent a letter to KE stating that if the company’s issues with the government agencies were not resolved on priority basis the federal government will take over the company, stating that the government was already supplying over 1300MW electricity to KE but being paid only for 650MW electricity. KE denies receiving any such letter from the government.
Now after PM’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia the matter is nearing conclusion and the PPA is expected to be signed soon.