NEPRA to Decide Fate of PM's Industrial Power Package at October 5 Hearing

Pakistan's power regulator is set to decide on October 5, 2026, whether to suspend, raise, or leave unchanged the discounted electricity rate that has been available to industrial and agricultural consumers since December 2025 — a decision arriving in the same week the government is separately seeking an additional Rs25 billion from electricity consumers generally to cover October fuel costs.

What the Incremental Consumption Package actually does

Introduced in December 2025, the Prime Minister's Incremental Consumption Package offers industrial and agricultural consumers additional electricity, beyond their historical baseline usage, at a discounted rate of Rs22.98 per unit — well below what those units would otherwise cost under standard industrial tariffs. The idea was to encourage higher electricity consumption by shifting demand that might otherwise go to captive generation or simply not materialise, helping absorb excess capacity in a power system that has long struggled with underused, expensive generation capacity sitting idle while consumers pay capacity charges for it regardless of use.

The package was supposed to be reviewed after six months. NEPRA is now conducting that review nine months in, at a public hearing scheduled for October 5.

The three questions NEPRA has to answer

NEPRA has laid out the scope of the October 5 hearing around three specific questions: whether the package should be temporarily suspended given prevailing fuel prices; whether the existing Rs22.98-per-unit rate should be revised upward to align with the actual marginal cost of supplying that power; and, if it is revised upward, whether the increase should take effect retroactively from June 2026, from the October 2026 billing month, or from some other point. Business representatives have consistently argued the package is flawed in its current form, saying it does not benefit most industries while spreading the cost burden across all consumers — a criticism that predates this review and has been raised at earlier hearings over the package's design.

Why the IMF is watching this one closely

The review is not purely a domestic regulatory matter. The International Monetary Fund has inquired about the delay in reviewing the industrial package, a sign the discounted rate has drawn the Fund's attention as part of its broader scrutiny of Pakistan's persistent circular debt problem and the subsidies embedded in the country's power-pricing structure. A programme that offers electricity below cost to a subset of consumers runs against the kind of cost-recovery principles the IMF has pushed Islamabad to adopt across the energy sector as a condition of its ongoing Extended Fund Facility programme.

A second, separate hit landing the same month

Independent of the October 5 hearing, the government has sought to pass on an additional Rs25 billion in fuel costs to electricity consumers through October bills. CPPA-G chief executive Rehan Akhtar attributed the increase primarily to expensive RLNG and coal imports combined with lower-than-estimated output from cheaper hydropower and nuclear facilities over the relevant billing period. This fuel charges adjustment is calculated and applied on its own monthly schedule, distinct from the incremental package rate under review — meaning the two can move independently, and in the same direction, in the same billing cycle. That compounding effect has been a recurring feature of Pakistani electricity bills this year, as tracked in our coverage of September's inflation data, where a quarterly tariff adjustment alone pushed the average per-unit rate up nearly 19% in a single week.

What happens after October 5

If NEPRA suspends the incremental package outright, industrial and agricultural consumers lose access to the discounted rate on additional usage going forward — a change industry groups are likely to resist given how dependent some of their planning has become on the lower rate. If NEPRA instead raises the rate and backdates it to June, consumers who used the package over the past several months could face retroactive charges on top of whatever they already budgeted for. Either outcome adds to an electricity pricing picture that remains in flux on multiple fronts at once, with consumers unable to treat any single bill as a reliable guide to the next.

Build Better Pakistan's Energy Desk is tracking NEPRA's October 5 hearing and will report on the outcome once it is announced.