Energy Update reported on 10 September 2026 that ISMO had started collecting project data for IGCEP 2027-37, with returns due from stakeholders by 14 September. NEPRA has not yet approved IGCEP 2025-35. Under the Grid Code the system operator must prepare a ten-year plan every year and submit it to NEPRA as part of the Integrated System Plan by 30 April, so the next cycle has started on schedule while the last one is still in front of the regulator.
The 2025 plan was itself late. ISMO's own addendum on the Dhabeji hybrid project records that the ISP 2025 was approved by the NGC and ISMO boards on 16 June and 16 July 2025 and reached NEPRA on 8 August 2025. That is 100 days after the 30 April deadline, by our count. A plan that arrives three months late and then waits more than a year for a decision is a weak basis for procurement.
What NEPRA asked
NEPRA's hearing in May 2026 was framed around fourteen issues, and they read as a critique of the whole method. The regulator asked why further capacity is justified given surplus capacity and falling demand, why the demand projections appear unrealistic, why DISCOs were not consulted on the data, why reported installed capacity does not match actual capacity, why future commercial operation dates look unrealistic, why the generation and transmission plans are not aligned with each other, and why the tariff impact of new capacity was not assessed. It also asked why no independent third-party review was done.
Those are fair questions, and several apply equally to the 2027 exercise now under way. Provinces have been sent proformas on thermal, hydro, renewable and hybrid projects. If the returns repeat optimistic commercial operation dates, the new plan inherits the old plan's main weakness.
A correction on the numbers
Reports that IGCEP 2025-35 takes installed capacity from 43,069 MW to 64,035 MW misread the plan. In the submitted document, 43,069 MW is the 2035 peak demand in the high-demand forecast, and 64,035 MW is the 2035 total in one of the alternative scenarios. The reference rationalised case reaches 62,657 MW by 2034-35. Against the 45,888 MW of installed capacity that the Pakistan Economic Survey reports for FY2024, that is growth of about 37 per cent (62,657 divided by 45,888).
Our view
NEPRA should decide on 2025-35 quickly, even if the decision is a conditional approval with conditions attached, and require the 2027 plan to answer the fourteen issues explicitly. We would add one requirement: a published dataset of every candidate project's claimed commercial operation date next to its actual status, so slippage is visible from one plan to the next.