ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced a three-month relief period for lifeline consumers of electricity whose consumption remains below 200 units per month.
A post on the X account of state broadcaster PTV News said: “The government will give a discount of Rs50 billion to the electricity lifeline consumers in July, August and September. For three months, 25 million consumers of the country will benefit from the government’s relief.”
It added that the move would benefit “94 per cent of the country’s domestic consumers” of electricity.
Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, PM Shehbaz said the package would provide relief of up to Rs7 per unit to around 25m domestic consumers falling in the protected category for three months till September.
“Today, an amount of Rs50bn has been allocated to provide a relief of Rs 4-7 per unit as a concession to our protected category consumers using up to 200 units a month for a three-month period from July to September.
“This will benefit around 25m domestic power consumers which constitute around 94pc of the total consumer base,” the prime minister said.He said that the federal government had scraped the said amount from its development budget to realise its commitment to public relief, contrary to the “hollow claims” of previous governments.
Shehbaz also assured the people of further relief as the government achieved fiscal space consequent to its ongoing measures of taxing the elite class, expanding the tax net, closing non-performing entities and plugging financial leakages.
He told the gathering of federal ministers and senior government officers that during its previous 16-month stint, the coalition government saved the country from default by putting its politics at stake.
PM Shehbaz said the government was going to sign a three-year programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and had also taken it on board about the relief announced for the domestic power consumers.
He said the federal and Balochistan governments had reached an agreement a day ago to solarise around 28,000 tube wells in the province to save annual Rs80-90bn as the consumers were defaulting payment on power bills.
