Second round of power plant auctions kicks off

May 20, 2025 (MLN): The second phase of auctioning old and non-operational power plants has been launched by state-owned power generation companies (GENCOs), as part of efforts to streamline the energy sector by offloading idle assets and improving financial efficiency.

However, the government received a poor response in this round, with only one company submitting a bid during the auction held.

The second phase involved the open bidding of three obsolete and defunct power plants offered on an “as-is, where-is” basis.

The combined installed capacity of these plants is 2,362 megawatts, with a cumulative reserve price set at Rs26.625 billion.

These included the 880 MW Jamshoro Thermal Power Station, 1,350 MW Muzaffargarh Thermal Power Station, and 132 MW Steam Power Station in Faisalabad.

The bidding process was conducted at GENCO Holding Company Ltd. (GHCL) under the "single stage, two envelope" method to ensure transparency, as per the press release.

Despite the scale of the offering, only Siddiqsons (Karachi) submitted a bid, specifically for the JPCL Jamshoro plant. No bids were received for the Muzaffargarh and Faisalabad facilities.

This second phase follows the completion of an earlier round in which nine decommissioned plants in Kotri, Lakhra, Quetta, Sukkur, Multan, Faisalabad, and Shahdara (Lahore) were offered under the International Competitive Bidding (ICB) model.

That process also used the single-stage, two-envelope method in line with the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) Rules of 2004.

In total, 29 units with a combined generation capacity of 4,074 MW and a reserve price of Rs40.66bn have been made available for auction.

These units span across various GENCOs in Jamshoro (GENCO-I), Guddu (GENCO-II), Muzaffargarh (GENCO-III), and Lakhra (GENCO-IV).

The original bid submission deadline for the Guddu plant under CPGCL has now been extended to May 30, 2025.

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