ISLAMABAD: Pakis­tan’s largest export body, the All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (Aptma), has questioned government targets to expand generation capacity by 50 per cent to 64,000 megawatts over 2025-35, calling them unrealistic and requiring about $50 billion of investment that would lock in “high-cost power”.

In a detailed set of objections to the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra), Aptma demanded a stringent reality check of the exaggerated demand forecasts based on population and GDP growth, allegedly without taking into account ground realities taking shape in the country and the power sector.

The association said it has “a fundamental issue with the demand-forecasting methodology, which undermines the credibility of the entire plan” and suggested a broader set of priorities for incorporation in the Indicative Generation Capacity Expa­nsion Plan (IGCEP 2025-35) “to realign energy planning with on-the-ground economic real­ities and critical need for affordability and competitiveness in power tariffs”.

It said the IGCEP employed an overly simplistic and rather incorrect statistical (regression) model that linked grid electricity consumption to GDP growth, population growth and similar macro variables. The underlying assumption is that as the economy and population expand, grid demand will rise proportionally.

However, this approach could not account for substitution effects arising from captive power........

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