The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) questioned the credibility of the growth projections by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) for Pakistan. NEPRA reasoned that the projections were at odds with the country’s actual growth over the previous two fiscal years.
On Wednesday, during a public hearing on the National Transmission and Despatch Company’s (NTDC) Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan (IGCEP) 2022–2031, the regulator made these remarks in response to NTDC using the projections of the WB instead of the government of Pakistan, and a brief discussion took place in this regard.
The Finance Division and Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), according to NTDC officials, have refused to share any documents about growth projections for the upcoming few years, while the Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives did not respond to its letter. Chairman NEPRA announced that NTDC’s claim of non-provision of data by the said departments would be probed.
Chairman NEPRA said that “The IGCEP will be revised every year.” “If the NTDC is projecting an average growth rate of 4.3 percent for the next 10 years, it can be revised next year. One of my main concerns was that two years before World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had projected Pakistan’s GDP growth of just 1 percent, but we achieved 5.9 percent in that year and six percent next year.”
