By Uzma Zafar
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday chaired the 47th meeting of the Council of Common Interest (CCI) and approved NEP 2021 (National Electricity Policy 2021).
According to details, the session headed by Imran Khan was attended by federal ministers, chief ministers and other concerned officials. Briefing media about the decisions take in the meeting, Federal Minister for Energy Hammad Azhar said that the Council of Common Interest has approved National Electricity Policy 2021 with a consensus of all provinces.
“The new electricity policy has been approved for 10 years,” he said, adding that people will get cheaper and environment-friendly electricity under the new power policy approved by the CCI.
Criticising the previous government, the federal energy minister said that the policy should have been approved 15 years ago.
He said that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government was working on various options to resolve the issues in the power sector including the circular debt.
“Had we put in place a policy like this 15 years ago, we would not have a troubled power sector today,” the minister added. The minister said in the light of the new electricity policy, policies for sub-sectors will be devised. He further said that the PTI government had allocated Rs100billion in the federal budget 2021-22 to improve the transmission system in the energy sector.
In the previous CCI meeting chaired by PM Khan on June. 18, the meeting discussed in detail the draft of the National Electricity Policy 2021 and constituted a committee to further deliberate upon the proposed policy.
The body was tasked to present the final draft before the CCI in its next meeting on Monday. The committee comprises the finance minister, energy minister, law minister, SAPM for Power and chief ministers of the four provinces.
