Pakistan says power grid restored after nationwide blackout

Islamabad — Pakistan’s energy ministry said on Tuesday it had restored its national power grid nearly 24 hours after a breakdown triggered the worst outage in months, highlighting the frailty of the aid-dependant nation’s infrastructure.

All 1,112 grid stations were back online, a senior government official said, adding that electricity would be fully restored across the country once power generation units were back up. 

The outage, which began on Monday morning during the peak winter season, is the second major grid failure to hit the nation of 220-million people since October, though there are partial blackouts almost daily.

Residents in large cities said they now had electricity, but some areas of the country were still without power.

Analysts and officials blame the power problems on an ageing electricity network, which like much of the national infrastructure, desperately needs an upgrade that the government says it can ill afford.

The IMF has bailed out Pakistan five times in the last two decades. Its latest bailout tranche, however, is stuck due to differences with the government over a programme review that should have been completed in November.

Pakistan has enough installed power capacity to meet demand, but it lacks resources to run its oil-and-gas powered plants. The sector is so heavily in debt that it cannot afford to invest in infrastructure and power lines.

China has invested in its power sector as part of a $60bn infrastructure scheme that feeds into Beijing’s “Belt and Road” initiative.

Reuters