The Prime Minister’s Third Pause on Net-Metering Revision

On 21 July 2025 Dawn reported that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had, for a third time, ordered the Power Division to stand down from a campaign to revise net-metering buyback rates before a formal summary reached his office. The shelved plan, as described, sought to cut buyback from about Rs 27 to about Rs 11.3 per unit, alongside revised settlement mechanisms. Power Minister Awais Leghari’s public comments days earlier framed the problem as unjustified returns and surplus capacity risk, while promising that existing adopters under policy would not be penalised.

Official estimates cited in the same reporting put net-metered connections around 325,000 with about 6,500 MW of installed capacity, concentrated especially in Lahore and other urban centres. Transition Economics Institute’s reading is that repeated pauses without an alternative package deepen uncertainty. Cabinet rejection of earlier ECC-cleared changes should have triggered a stakeholder process, not a third covert summary.