Fleecing lambs

One was to send the changes to the net metering policy back to the energy ministry for reconsideration. And the other was to reinstate a tax rebate allowed to researchers and teachers in higher education institutions which everyone was told suddenly in December 2024 had been withdrawn in the budget announced in June 2022. In both instances, we had a story that was rather typical of how things are done in Pakistan, and how it presents us with a problem to be solved. In the case of the solar policy, the energy ministry literally took the explosive success of their last net metering policy and presented it as a failure, arguing that all the beneficiaries of that policy were “elites” who had become a burden on the power system, and carrying this burden was the main reason that electricity bills had become so expensive.