Part I

Access to electricity (% of population)

World Development Indicators (Comparative Data Analysis)

Pakistan Bangladesh India Mayanmar Sirilanka Bhutan

1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s 70 20 53
2000s 70 43 66 48 77 54
2010s 71 69 83 57 92 91
2020s 71 76 82 59 92 92

Pakistan’s performance for - percentage electricity provision to its people - has been analyzed
from information extracted from zip file for the variable named ‘Access to electricity % of
population. Five countries of the region have been chosen so that accurate performance
analysis could be done. All the countries chosen belong to South Asia and all the countries are
developing countries like Pakistan. South Asia countries are developing and the growing
economies require huge amount of energy and electricity. Choosing of the countries belong to
south asian region which provided better comparisons while assessing performance of Pakistan
as these countries are also developing and have access to almost the same resources as
Pakistan besides the climate and other conditions are also the same. The next question covers
most of the analytical areas.

Part II
Q2

Energy plays a very vital role in the cultural, economic, political, and social sectors running the
whirl of development by maintaining all the requirements of a society. Rapidly increasing
energy needs of humans are not supported by the current energy resources as the conventional
energy sources have already been immensely exploited to meet the daily-life requirements.
South Asia comprises of the countries like Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, India, Pakistan,
and Sri Lanka. The South Asian countries are included in the list of rapidly growing and
developing nations in the entire world.

Many countries are becoming dependent on electricity supplies to do better for the economic
growth. This reliance is set to grow as more efficient and less carbon intensive forms of power
are developed and deployed to help decarbonizes economies, It is impossible to operate a
factory, run a shop, grow crops or deliver goods to consumers without using some form of
energy. Access to electricity is particularly crucial to human development as electricity is, in
practice, indispensable for certain basic activities, such as lighting, refrigeration and the running
of household appliances, and cannot easily be replaced by other forms of energy.

Due to increasing industrialization and economic growth, Pakistan’s demand for energy has
increased since the fiscal year 2014 at an average annual rate of 5 percent. The energy
requirement of the country has increased sharply. Pakistan relies on the imports of fossil fuels.
Pakistan imports more than eighty percent of its crude oil from abroad. Rising electricity
generation rates from thermal power units and incoherent fuel mixes still have to be resolved.
Domestic gas, the other most important source of energy, is expanding the country’s
dependence on liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports to reduce shortfalls. Pakistan is currently
producing 60 percent of its electricity from oil and gas whereas only 28 percent is being
generated from hydro electric power stations.
The above graph shows that all the four countries have better excess to electricity by their
people as compared to Pakistan except Myanmar. Bangladesh surpassed Pakistan during 2015
whereas India made it possible during 2012 to go ahead of Pakistan in the provision of
electricity to its public. Sri Lanka remained ahead throughout and Bhutan also got ahead of
Pakistan during 2009. During 2020s almost all the countries performed well except Myanmar
which has its geo political issues and ethnicity issues. Pakistan has to exploit its renewable
energy resources to cope with the continuous demand of electricity in the country.

India has made a commendable progress in recent years in increasing citizen’s access to
electricity and clean cooking. It has implemented a range of energy market reforms especially
related to renewable electricity deployment. However Pakistan is mostly dependent on imports
of fossil fuel for its energy requirements and is not exploiting its renewable resources for
electricity generation.

A decade ago, less than 50 percent of Bangladeshis had access to electricity; today, 78 percent
have it, underlining the impressive progress made by the Government. Bangladesh initiated a
successful program of private power production as early as the late 1990s and has since
embarked on a large public investment program in the sector as well as a systematic program
of electricity imports from India. Bangladesh surpassed Pakistan during 2015 in percentage of
provision of electricity to its people.

In Sri Lanka there are political influences at grass root levels that may sometimes result in
politically driven decisions. But the country as a whole has achieved greater heights in terms of
providing commercial energy sources to the rural sector, which will result in overall economic
growth.

Over the past 15 years, the energy demand for South Asian countries has grown-up by 60%.
Since 1990, the energy demand for South Asia is expanded by two and half times, according to
the International Energy Agency (IEA). The South Asian nations have shared a common problem
of unprecedented availability of energy resources, and environmental concerns. Energy
consumption of South Asian countries is anticipated to continue to grow in the next two
decades due to substantial economic and population growth.

Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh are individually having substantial reserves of coal which have
not been explored to their magnitude. Instead of having a smooth and secured chain of
domestic supplies to accommodate to burgeoning demand due to collapse of gas supplies in
Pakistan and Bangladesh, there is a growing pressure from the stakeholders to increase the
import dependency. Lack of diversification of fuel basket: There is a different energy
consumption pattern (by fuel mix) in the three countries. The largest primary energy consumer
is India which uses 65% coal as a portion of primary energy in fiscal year 2018. In Bangladesh,
gas reserves serve the most of its primary energy demand, i.e. 70%. There are a number of
reasons which makes it liable to use gas in different economic and social sectors like massive
local gas reserves, lower cost and properly designed pipelines. Pakistan is also dependent
heavily on its gas reserves, i.e. a total of 48% of primary energy in its fiscal year 2018, although
because of some local supply issues as well as growing confidence on foreign LNG, i.e.
imported, its usage has tempered. Thus, almost all the countries have less diversity in their
energy mix. Strong focus on imports: All the South Asian nations trusted in and continued their
energy journey dependent on foreign reserves, i.e. the imports, instead of utilizing their own
domestic reserves of renewable energies. One of the main reasons of being dependant on
heavy imports is the absence of refinery infrastructure in the region (except India).