Energy shortage leads to "Gen-set Economy"

Present energy shortage is leading to "Gen-set Economy". It was stated by President Pak-China Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Shah Faisal Afridi.

He said that power shortage has made the manufacturing sector of Pakistan dependent to the Generators and self generation of electricity has raised the cost of production due to the increased import bill of furnace oil and the machinery used for alternative source of electricity. "With the every import bill rise, the economy faces imbalance in trade", added Afridi. He said that according to some official reports the country paid a total of $6.69 billion for the import of petroleum products and furnace oil during the July-Nov 2014-15. The amount was higher than the import bill of the same period last year which was around $6.43bn.

He informed that the Import bill of power generating machinery also rose by 50 percent this year as compared to the last year. He mentioned that import bill of power generating machinery stood at $283.706 million at the end of first quarter of FY 15 registering 49.83 percent increase over the import bill of $189.351 million in same period of FY 14." Government was continuously claiming addition of significant electricity in national grid during last year, but the statistics indicate that industries are still struggling to prevail over energy shortened related worries.

He said that manufacturers are left with no other option than development of own sources of energy supply through investment in generators.

The case for such investment becomes greater the larger the time losses due to outages and the stronger the expectation that relatively high levels of power interruptions will persist in the long run, he added.