PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has expressed reservations over the federal government’s proposed Competitive Trading Bilateral Contract Market (CTBCM) framework, calling it an attempt to reduce the potential of the province’s natural hydropower resources and saying that provincial governments were not taken on board during the design of the framework.
It says the proposed framework could become a major obstacle in the way of the province’s long-term energy projects, so the federal government should review its decisions.
In this context, in order to clarify the provincial government’s position and concerns, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government convened a consultative meeting with the help of ISMO, which was led by Executive Director Umar Haroon Malik. Senior officials of Peshawar Energy Development Organisation (PEDO), representatives of FF Steel Peshawar, Bestway Cement Hattar, Industries Department and KP Board of Investment and Trade (KP-BOIT), provincial government, attended the meeting.
Addressing the meeting Special Assistant to Chief Minister KP on Energy Engineer Tariq Sadozai said that after the NEPRA-determined wheeling charges of Rs 2.1 per kW from the 18MW Pehur Power Plant in the wetting model, the distribution companies had demanded Rs. 28 per kW after the injunction because they were afraid of losing their customers.
He said that new CTBCM framework is following the same pattern of discouraging the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government’s energy projects by proposing a new pricing setup that involves multiple pricing charges, including cross-subsidies, financial charges and additional federal capacity, which potentially make a competitive market unfeasible.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) PEDO highlighted that the province’s interests must be protected and any new design of the power market must provide a level playing field for its hydropower projects.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
