Before putting two of Punjab’s largest power utilities on the auction block, the government wants to know if they’re worth more in pieces than as a whole, and it has assembled a team of experts to find out.
The Privatization Ministry has formed a technical committee to examine whether the Lahore Electric Supply Company (LESCO) and the Multan Electric Power Company (MEPCO) should be carved into smaller distribution companies ahead of their long-planned privatization. The logic is simple: a leaner, more manageable utility might fetch a better price and attract keener bidders than the sprawling, underperforming giants they are today.
The panel brings together the Privatization Commission, the Power Division, the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA), and the Power Planning & Monitoring Company (PPMC). Its brief is to weigh the operational and strategic fallout of any breakup, test the idea against the National Electricity Plan, the Power Policy, and the broader privatization roadmap, and dust off whatever previous studies have already said on the matter.
The urgency is hardly a mystery. Both LESCO and MEPCO have been trailing their Punjab peers on the metrics that matter most: electricity theft, transmission and distribution losses, and bill recoveries. Official audits for the fiscal year 2024-25 painted a grim picture, describing the performance of both companies as unsatisfactory — a diplomatic way of saying they have been bleeding where they should be billing.
MEPCO, the country’s largest distribution company by consumer count, serves roughly 8.76 million customers across 13 districts of southern Punjab. Its network stretches over 82,000 kilometers of distribution lines and more than 780 grid stations. The utility has been pouring money into advanced metering infrastructure and digital billing, hoping technology can succeed where legacy systems have failed.
LESCO, for its part, powers around 7.05 million consumers in Lahore and the surrounding districts of Kasur, Sheikhupura, Nankana Sahib, and Okara. It too has been chasing smart meters and digitalization, though chronic shortages of transformers and meters have left new connections in limbo and drawn the regulator’s glare.
The committee’s findings will determine whether these two utilities enter the privatization pipeline intact — or whether the government opts to break them apart first, betting that smaller, nimbler entities will prove easier to sell and, eventually, easier to run.
