When the guardian turns deceiver, the fall is never gentle. It is written in ruin. In every society, when those entrusted with protection begin to betray that trust, history does not forgive—it records the collapse in the language of disaster. Pakistan today stands in such a moment, and at its centre lies a decision so grave that its consequences will echo far beyond our borders.

Nations are taught to fear enemies across their borders. Armies prepare for threats that march under foreign flags. Yet what destroys a country more completely is often not the adversary outside, but the corrosion within. An economy is the foundation of military power. Without economic strength, even the bravest soldiers stand on weakened ground. When internal institutions undermine economic stability, they wound the very base upon which national defence rests.

The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA), created in 1997 in an era when circular debt did not even exist as a phrase in our national vocabulary, was meant to shield citizens from exploitation and guide the power sector with integrity. Instead, its recent decision to convert net metering into net billing feels like a wound inflicted not only upon the people of Pakistan, but upon the promises our nation has made to the world.

This is not merely a regulatory adjustment. It is a moral rupture. Circular debt—once unknown—has grown into a monstrous fiscal crisis devouring the energy sector. Unpaid subsidies. Weak bill recoveries and low efficiency of thermal power plants overseen by NEPRA. Crippling distribution losses. The Prime Minister himself confessed that circular debt turned Pakistan into a global beggar’s bowl. Those words were not political rhetoric. They were an admission of national humiliation.

Under public pressure, a high-level committee was formed to renegotiate IPP agreements, widely acknowledged as a fundamental cause of this debt spiral. Yet even before the first document was reviewed, the outcome seemed predetermined. Many who bore responsibility for the crisis were seated at the very table tasked with correcting it. The result was not reform. It was repetition. So again, by December 2025, it reached Rs 1,700 billion.

The........

© The Friday Times