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IGCEP: The Full Story : Questions That Need to Be Answered

  IGCEP: The Full Story Questions That Need to Be Answered From the hearing room to a NEPRA approval — what Pakistan's four-month power planning debate actually revealed, and where we go from here By Rehan Javed  |  September 2026   On May 20 this year, a public hearing was convened at NEPRA in Islamabad on Pakistan's Indicative System Plan 2025-35. The plan has two parts. The first is the Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan, or IGCEP, a blueprint for which power plants to build over the next decade, when to build them, and at what cost. The second is the Transmission System Expansion Plan, or TSEP which is a blueprint for the cables, towers and substations needed to carry that electricity from generation sites to consumers. Together they represent the most consequential set of investment decisions in Pakistan's energy sector in a generation: USD 57 billion committed over ten years that will determine what every Pakistani pays for electricity in 2030 and 20...
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How WACC financing drives up consumer tariffs, why solar and BESS must be central to the next plan, and what affordability-first planning looks like

  IGCEP 2027: A Real Opportunity to Get Power Planning Right How WACC financing drives up consumer tariffs, why solar and BESS must be central to the next plan, and what affordability-first planning looks like Business Recorder reported today that ISMO has begun collecting data for IGCEP 2027, covering the decade 2027 to 2037, with stakeholder submissions due by September 14. This is genuinely good news. Pakistan needs a long-term generation plan. The country's infrastructure requires investment, its grid needs upgrading, and its energy mix must evolve. A new indicative plan, built thoughtfully on updated data, is exactly what the sector needs. The opportunity is real , and so is the risk of repeating the same mistakes. IGCEP 2025-35 has not yet been approved; NEPRA raised questions about it in May 2026 that remain unanswered. If IGCEP 2027 is built on the same planning framework , starting with how much generation can be added and working forward to a consumer tariff , it will arr...
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Why cheap electricity at the last stage does not make our exports competitive

Why cheap electricity at the last stage does not make our exports competitive In response to: "Export reality", Dawn editorial — https://www.dawn.com/news/2028058/export-reality Dawn's editorial "Export reality" makes a fair point. The trade deficit has widened sharply in the first two months of this fiscal year, FPCCI is right to call the cost of doing business a binding constraint, and the paper is also right that this is not the whole story our product mix has barely moved in decades while competitors climbed the value chain, and value addition was always the way out of that trap. I want to add one thing to that diagnosis, because I think it explains part of why value addition has not happened. We keep looking at the value-added exporter in isolation, instead of at the cost structure that produces his final product. Take textiles. In spinning and weaving, electricity can be 20–30 per cent of the cost of production. In stitching and garment manufacturing, it m...
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