Islamabad: The latest audit report of the Auditor General of Pakistan has exposed the dire situation of recoveries in the electricity sector. According to the report, in the financial year 2024-25, DISCOS (electricity distribution companies) completely failed to recover Rs480 billion from defaulters.
The data shows that DISCOS are still unable to recover from more than 476,000 defaulters, due to which the burden on the national exchequer is continuously increasing.
According to the report, the arrears of electricity bills have increased by Rs828 billion during the last six years. In 2021-22, the arrears under recovery were Rs1189 billion, which increased to Rs2017 billion by 2024.
Moreover, the amount of non-recovery increased by Rs341 billion during just one year (2021-22), after which this volume reached Rs1530 billion. This was followed by an increase of Rs 197 billion in 2022-23 and another Rs 290 billion in 2023-24.
Experts say that the continuous failure of DISCOs in recoveries is a major crisis for the energy sector. If this problem is not controlled, not only will the circular debt increase further, but an increase in electricity prices may also be inevitable.
