Roving Periscope: Broke Pakistan falters the Sri Lankan way
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Like Sri Lanka, cash-strapped Pakistan has also started cutting electricity supply to households and industry. It is burdened with nearly USD 300 billion of foreign debt and its economy is sustained, month to month, on borrowings from lenders like China, the Middle East, and the IMF.
But this has not deterred its politicians from playing their petty games. Even after ousting Imran Khan from power last week, his replacement, Shahbaz Sharif, who took the oath as the new PM on April 11, could not induct his team of ministers for an entire week.
And even the President, Arif Alvi, an Imran Khan acolyte, played his own games!
The new PM, Shahbaz Sharif’s 34-member Cabinet could be sworn in only on Tuesday after many delays. Sadiq Sanjarani, the chairperson of the Senate (Upper House), had to administer the oath to the new ministers as the President refused to swear in the lawmakers on Monday!
In fact, President Alvi did not even attend the ceremony, compelling the government to postpone the oath ceremony for lawmakers.
As if this was not enough, former President Asif Ali Zardari also threw tantrums and arm-twisted Sharif to extract his pound of flesh, for his Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)’s support in ousting Imran Khan. When he found his son Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari was not on the list of probable ministers, the Zardari Senior put indirect pressure, saying he wanted Sharif to induct ministers from other coalition partners.
This meant the PPP could temporarily support the coalition government from outside and pull the rug from under its feet at a convenient time. It would have made the new government fragile from day one.
This forced Sharif to make an inexperienced and ebullient Bilawal the new Foreign Minister. A former Foreign Minister, Hina Rabbani, inducted as a deputy to Bilawal, will assist him in running the all-important ministry on a day-to-day basis!
Apart from the ongoing political crisis—in fact, Imran Khan is still attracting huge crowds for his Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaf (PTI) rallies as he did in Peshawar and Karachi last week—Islamabad’s economic woes have only worsened in the last week.
Since the nearly bankrupt country can no longer import coal or natural gas from overseas to fuel its power plants, Islamabad has announced to cut electricity supply to both households and industry. The duration of these cuts will only increase in the coming summer months.
Pakistan is struggling to buy fuel from the spot markets after prices of LPG and coal surged after February 24 in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The war only exacerbated the fuel supply crisis.
Pakistan’s energy costs more than doubled to USD 15 billion in nine months ended February from a year earlier, and it cannot spend more on additional shipments, the media reported.
About 3,500 megawatts worth of power capacity had been shut because of the fuel shortages as of April 13, Miftah Ismail, the new Finance Minister, said. A similar amount is offline due to technical faults, he said.
This over 7,000 megawatts of shortfall means almost a fifth of the total generation capacity in Pakistan is unproductive at present. The electricity crunch is complicating the already tough economic challenge for Sharif.
Pakistan’s long-term LNG suppliers canceled several shipments scheduled for delivery over the last few months, further tightening supplies.
On Sunday, Islamabad released a tender to procure six LNG cargoes from the spot market, but that could cost the government hundreds of millions of dollars, the media added.
