Pakistan restores evening load‑shedding
- Pakistan reintroduced planned evening load‑shedding of up to 2.25 hours to manage peak power demand. - Officials framed the measure as a step to avoid tariff shocks and stabilise the grid. - Recurring planned outages highlight operational fragility for factories, logistics, and data centres in regional manufacturing hubs (pakistantoday.com.pk).
Pakistan has brought back planned evening power cuts of up to 2.25 hours a day, with outages scheduled during the 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. peak window. (profit.pakistantoday.com.pk) The Power Division said the outages would be feeder-wise and would apply across most distribution companies, while Hyderabad Electric Supply Company and K-Electric were excluded from the 2.25-hour plan. (nation.com.pk) Officials said the immediate trigger was the cost of meeting evening demand with expensive fuels after disruptions in liquefied natural gas supply. Pakistan Today and Independent Pakistan both reported the government was trying to reduce reliance on furnace oil and imported fuel in the peak hours. (pakistantoday.com.pk) (independent-pakistan.com) The government’s public case was about prices as much as supply. Officials said restricting peak-hour generation could hold the increase to about Rs1.5 per unit, instead of a possible Rs5 to Rs6 per unit without the measure. (nation.com.pk) (profit.pakistantoday.com.pk) That tradeoff lands in a power system already under pressure from debt and tariff politics. In September 2025, Geo News reported the International Monetary Fund had pressed Pakistan to cut power-sector circular debt to zero in the fiscal year, with a new baseline tariff to take effect from January 1, 2026. (geo.tv) Pakistan’s government had also committed in 2025 to routine tariff adjustments, limits on new subsidies, and debt restructuring in the power sector under its International Monetary Fund-backed reform plan, according to Profit. (profit.pakistantoday.com.pk) The latest cuts mark a shift from the older load-shedding story of simple power shortages. A recent explainer on GTSS said Pakistan’s 2026 outages are tied more to fuel costs, financial constraints, and transmission inefficiencies than to a lack of installed generation alone. (gtss.org.pk) Reports from Lahore and other cities suggest the strain is already spilling into daily operations. Samaa said reduced national-grid supply had forced Lahore Electric Supply Company to increase load shedding, disrupting routines and business activity as temperatures rose. (samaa.tv) For households and businesses, the policy turns the evening peak into a managed blackout window instead of a tariff jump. For the government, it is a stopgap that keeps the grid running while the deeper fuel, debt and pricing problems remain unresolved. (pakistantoday.com.pk)
