EDITORIAL: A Power Division review has found that coal-fired power plants buying from the same international suppliers against the same recognised benchmark were receiving wildly different discounts, ranging from just $0.25 to $7.12 per metric ton. The government has now responded with a straightforward rule: plants must procure from the contracted supplier offering the best available discount. The measure could save around Rs380 million a year without requiring any additional investment. It is a sensible intervention, no doubt, yet it also raises the rather uncomfortable question of why something so obvious was allowed to continue for so long. The discrepancies hardly required extraordinary forensic work to uncover. Procurement data, contractual arrangements and benchmark-linked pricing were already available, and the inefficiencies became apparent once officials actually compared them. In some cases, backup arrangements carried better discounts than primary supply agreements. In others, plants continued buying from suppliers offering poorer terms even though contracted alternatives were offering better discounts. When fuel costs ultimately feed into electricity tariffs, such deci
