In Pakistan’s power sector, aid doesn’t just fund wires and transformers—it writes policy, births institutions, and designs governance frameworks. From WAPDA’s unbundling to today’s regional micro-hydro initiatives, foreign donors and multilateral lenders have played a decisive role in shaping the country’s entire energy architecture.

What looks like a domestic public sector is, in fact, a landscape engineered through external influence often with little sustained success.

It began in the 1990s, when the World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB), and USAID launched structural adjustment programs that led to the fragmentation of WAPDA. This was no organic reform.

Under pressure from lending conditions, Pakistan was pushed to carve out the power sector into new corporate entities: generation companies (GENCOs), distribution companies (DISCOs), a transmission company (NTDC), and a regulatory authority (NEPRA). These institutions were seeded, shaped, and staffed under the watchful eyes of international consultants and donor-funded technical assistance.

The Pakistan Electric Power Company (PEPCO), too, emerged not from local institutional need, but from the ADB’s desire to create a transition vehicle to oversee the corporatization process. NEPRA, established in 1997, was designed with heavy influence from the World Bank and USAID, importing global regulatory frameworks that were alien to Pakistan’s administrative and legal culture. Its tariff formulas, licensing structures, and oversight roles mirror donor........

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