Hubco pays Rs17b to PSO for oil payment
Aftab Ahmed
Islamabad: Hub Power Company Limited (Hubco) has paid Rs 17 billion to Pakistan State Oil (PSO) on account of oil supply payment after receiving the amount from the government.
The Hubco is one of the power plants that is a major defaulter of the PSO and paid Rs17 billion on account of fuel supplies. The power sector is to pay Rs 181.9 billion on the oil supply and PSO has been struggling to receive payment from them.
Hubco has already made payment of around Rs 17 billion to PSO that resulted in declining dues from Rs 356 billion to Rs 341.2 billion which reflect in its sheet. PSO expects to receive Rs 62 billion from IPPs.
Gencos are to pay Rs 135.5 billion, Hubco Rs 34.2 billion, and Kapco Rs 12.2 billion on account of oil supply payment.
PSO has been supplying furnace oil to these power plants. However, they had not paid dues for long. These power plants claimed that CPPA had not paid their electricity dues, and therefore, they were unable to clear the dues.
Now, the government had released Rs 39 billion to Kapco and Rs 23 billion to Hubco. However, the government had made it binding these power plants to make onwards payments to fuel suppliers like PSO.
However, PSO dues against SNGPL are piling up and touched Rs 128.7 billion, the highest ever on LNG supply. Meanwhile, SNGPL dues over Rs 100 billion have also been stuck in domestic consumers.
The government had diverted these funds to domestic consumers during the last three winter seasons to overcome the gas crisis.
However, there is no mechanism in place to recover the amount from the domestic consumers. Therefore, these dues continue piling up.
It had resulted in swelling circular debt in oil and gas sectors that had touched the Rs 1.6 trillion mark during the present government.
ECC had formed a committee to resolve this issue. However, it has not been able to find out a concrete solution so far.
PSO is to receive Rs 341.2 billion from different sectors. The power sector is the major defaulter.
Out of the total, it also received Rs 21.3 billion from PIA on account of fuel suppliers. PIA is also a chronic defaulter of PSO on jet fuel supply for national carriers’ operations. PSO is to pay Rs 28 billion to local refineries on account of fuel supply.
