$1.7 billion power machinery imported in fiscal year 2009

[Naveed Yaseen]

KARACHI (August 04 2009): The ongoing power crisis has also put negative impact on the imports bill as the country spent over 1.7 billion dollars for import of power generation machinery in last fiscal year, importers said. They said that the country is facing huge power shortage for last few years and despite all efforts the government and power utilities have failed to provide sufficient power supplies.

Therefore, continuing power shortage has made the general public, the industrialist and the exporters to acquire power generation machinery. Importers said that the prolonged power crisis has also compelled most export-oriented industrial units to shift on captive power generation for regular production.

They said that due to the current power crisis, import of power generation machinery increased by 48 percent to 1.748 billion dollars in fiscal year 2008-09 as against the 1.1 billion dollars in fiscal year 2007-08. With the current trend it is expected that during the current fiscal year import of power generation machinery might cross 2 billion dollars.

Month on month basis import of power generation machinery stood at 207 million dollars in July 2009 as compared to 176.733 million dollars in corresponding period of last fiscal year 2009, depicting an increase of 17.17 percent in July 2009. "After suffering worst kind of problems industrialist and exporters have acquired self-generation plants and now they are not relying on the country's power utility providers like Karachi Electric Supply Co-operation (KESC) and Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda)," importers said.

They said that exporters are facing serious power crisis in the industrial areas for last few years, which has caused millions of rupees losses to exporters. "We are now relaying on captive power generation rather than local suppliers as we believe that local power generation is not sufficient to meet industrial demand," industrialists said.

They said that every year December to July seems the peak season of garment and textile export, but due to unannounced load shedding caused millions of rupees loss in terms of delivery charges. Self-power generation has become a primary need for general public and all export-oriented units due to the ongoing power crisis, they added.