ISLAMABAD: The federal government has reconstituted the board of the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC) and appointed two Pakistani consultants from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to the board. The NTDC is responsible for receiving electricity from the power producing companies and and dispatching it to the distribution companies.
The Cabinet Committee on State-Owned Enterprises (CCOSOEs), which made these decisions, also restructured the board of Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited (ZTBL) and designated the Pakistan Housing Authority – Foundation (PHA-F), which constructs housing for government employees, as an essential entity.
Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb chaired the CCOSOEs meeting where these decisions were made.
According to a statement from the Ministry of Finance, the cabinet committee approved a proposal from the Power Division to appoint new independent directors and a chairman to the NTDC board. The CCOSOEs is currently categorizing 41 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as either essential or non-essential, with plans to privatize the non-essential entities. Out of 84 SOEs, the Cabinet Committee on Privatisation (CCOP) has already approved the sale of 24 over the next five years.
The categorization of the 41 SOEs as strategic and essential or non-essential will be submitted to the CCOP for approval. NTDC, which reported a profit of Rs11.7 billion for the fiscal year 2023, falls under the administrative control of the Power Division and is now governed by the State-Owned Enterprises (Governance and Operations) Act, 2023, and the Companies Act, 2017.
The CCOSOEs appointed three new members to the NTDC board, including two who had been advising USAID. Four of the seven independent directors, including Chairman Khalid Ishaq, had resigned. The board nomination committee reviewed a new list of candidates last month and recommended three individuals: Fiaz Ahmad Chaudhry, Sheikh Imranul Haque, and Emreena Asad Malik for the NTDC board.
The nomination committee also suggested reducing the number of ex-officio directors on the NTDC board from five to four, bringing the total number of members to 11, and removing the position of joint secretary of the Power Division. Dr. Fiaz Chaudhry, who has a PhD in electrical power engineering and over 39 years of experience in management, engineering consulting, and the electric utility business, has been appointed as the NTDC chairman.
He is also the founding director of the LUMS Energy Institute and serves as the Transmission Lead Adviser for USAID’s Power Sector Improvement Activity (PSIA) project. Chaudhry previously served as NTDC managing director in 2016-17.
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