THE government’s commitment to the IMF to scrap untargeted residential electricity subsidies from next year and replace them with a targeted support mechanism through the Benazir Income Support Programme is politically fraught but economically difficult to avoid any longer. It is also important to end untargeted subsidies because high tariffs have created powerful incentives for consumers to indulge in ‘legal power theft’ by manipulating the system. Households that can afford to do so instal mul