Power outages perturb industry

[Naveed Yaseen]

LAHORE: Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry has expressed concern over non-provision of electricity to the industrial sector despite withdrawal of subsidy and steep upward revision in tariff, saying severe shortage of power is giving a bad name to the government.

In a statement issued here on Tuesday, LCCI President Mohammad Ali Mian said the government had withdrawn the subsidy on electricity besides making an upward revision in its tariff on the pretext of making payments to Independent Power Producers (IPPs) but despite huge payments no let-up in power outages was in sight.

He said the crisis appeared insurmountable in the near future, unless proper understanding and correct implementation was done on priority.

At present, total power generation capacity of the country is about 17,000 megawatts but only 10,000MW is being produced against the demand of 14,000MW, causing a shortfall of about 4,000MW. That called for emergency measures on the part of government to explore all avenues of power generation, he said.

He urged the government to explain the reasons behind the deepening energy crisis, which took trade deficit to above $5 billion in the first quarter of 2008-09.

The LCCI president said the whole industrial sector in general and the export-oriented industry in particular were on the decline and had lost export orders worth millions of dollars only because of energy shortage.

On the one hand, he said, the country was losing much-needed foreign exchange while on the other the menace of unemployment was rearing its head and staring in the eyes of government.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=140988