KE's two-decade journey: a privatisation that delivered—I

Business Recorder

15-07-2025

In Karachi, few institutions are as routinely scrutinised and as casually misunderstood as its power utility. Frequent public discourse continues to echo a familiar but ultimately flawed narrative.
Perhaps it's time we shift focus and sift myth from reality, from blame to improvement, from assumptions to accountability, and from outdated narratives to informed dialogue, and view Karachi's energy story through a lens of improvement and shared responsibility.
When K-Electric was privatized in 2005, the promise was simple: inject capital, modernize an aging infrastructure, and bring efficiency to a system long strained by operational and financial inefficiencies.
Two decades on, the record is clear. Shareholders have brought in USD 700 million in foreign direct investment, and the company has invested over USD 4.6 billion in infrastructural improvements, equivalent to six times its profits, over the same period to rebuild generation, transmission, and distribution.
The result? T&D losses have been cut in half, from 35 percent to less than 15 percent, while the grid itself has doubled in physical size. A World Bank Public Expenditure Review confirms the fiscal dividend: PKR 900 billion saved for taxpayers and consumers since privatization.
These investments have visibly reshaped Karachi's power infrastructure. The gains manifest in the 30,000 distribution transformers now energising Karachi's neighbourhoods; in the 2,000 plus feeders that keep power flowing; and in the 3.8 million customers, double the 2005 base, who interact with KE through a bilingual WhatsApp channel or the KE Live app. They are visible in the factories where 100 percent of industrial meters are smart, ensuring time-of-use billing and instantaneous outage alerts, and across the network, where Aerial Bundled Cables (ABCs) have been deployed on over 40 percent of PMTs as part of ongoing efforts to curb theft, an approach that has yielded encouraging results in many areas, while continuing to be refined based on ground realities.
Pakistan's economic slowdown – marked by inflation, reduced demand, and high input costs – affected industries nationwide, regardless of their location or utility provider. If KE were truly the bottleneck, one would have seen some level of pushback. Instead, what we've seen is the opposite; reliance on KE's stable grid supply, letters of support submitted to NEPRA, and public endorsements during hearings, from financial institutions, industrial associations, community leaders, city's social changemakers, etc.
Today, Karachi's industrial zones are completely load-shed exempt. Power systems worldwide are subject to occasional disturbances, often originating from the load side, not the utility.
Voltage spikes, for example, are commonly triggered by machinery tripping, cable faults, or poor internal protection, due to machinery not compliant with the grid. Karachi bustling with around 150,000 small and medium scale industries – that ought to happen.
Owning to its digitization roadmap, KE remains committed to transparency, regulatory compliance, and continuous service enhancement, ensuring that the voices of its customers are heard, addressed, and respected at every level.
Today, over 70% of all customer interactions are handled through digital platforms, including WhatsApp, the KE Live App, and a 24/7 call center, a level of digital engagement unmatched by any other DISCO in Pakistan.
Complaints are tracked through ticketing systems, with escalation protocols and response-time targets monitored internally and by NEPRA. It is also important to highlight that KE operates within a multi-stakeholder accountability ecosystem, which includes not just Nepra but also external forums such as the Federal Ombudsman, PMDU, etc. Complaints escalated to such bodies constitute less than 0.1% of the total complaints received. Even in those cases, 98% decisions have consistently validated KE's processes and resolutions, reinforcing the effectiveness of its internal redressal mechanisms.
Another self-generated rhetoric is that Karachiites 'pay more.' In reality, KE cannot set prices; consumer tariff is determined by NEPRA under the Government of Pakistan's national uniform-tariff policy and it's the same across the country.
Whatever a household pays in Multan is what a household pays in Karachi.
Fuel Charge Adjustments, positive or negative, are similarly applied across Pakistan. In fact, since September 2024, KE has filed seven consecutive negative FCAs, including a relief of Rs 4.69 per kwh for April 2025 provisional FCA, the decision of which has also been issued by NEPRA approving a decrease of Rs 4.03 for customers of KE. Every calculation follows the Economic Merit Order: use the cheapest energy source first, pass the actual fuel cost to the bill, refund the difference when global prices fall.
Critics point to today's generation mix and conclude KE is 'lagging' on renewables. That snapshot ignores KE's already in implementation of 640 MW renewable energy projects, three of which—the 220MW Dhabeji wind–solar hybrid and 150 MW solar projects at Winder and Bela—have gained NEPRA's approval after receiving lowest-in-country bid levels. They will shift the portfolio toward lower-cost, zero-fuel-cost energy.
Under Vision 2030, KE targets 30 percent renewables, a 30 percent cut in outages, and 95 percent load-shedding exemption city-wide, backed by USD 2 billion in fresh investment.
(To be continued)
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025