Power supply to Karachi may be cut off.

ISLAMABAD -- An official told a parliamentary panel on Wednesday that electric supply to Karachi might be shut down if the federal government did not pay subsidy to K-Electric (KE), a private company that supplies power to Pakistan's economic hub.

'The federal government provides a subsidy of Rs10 to Rs20 per unit to K-Electric to maintain the tariff differential,' the power secretary during a meeting of the review and implementation committee of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

He said the K-Electric would have to be paid off its tariff difference subsidy immediately. The official said the National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC) had to pay Rs20 billion as markup to K-Electric. He said this amount had now swelled to Rs150 billion.

The secretary told the committee that the federal government provided a subsidy of Rs10 to Rs20 per unit to K-Electric to maintain the tariff differential. 'The federal government had not paid an amount of Rs150 billion to K-Electric,' he said.

He said a committee headed by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Shahid Khaqan Abbasi is trying to sort out the issue and hopefully will resolve it by the end of June. The official said lack of payment to K-Electric might lead...