Electricity Demand and Supply Gap Widens To 3226 Megawatts
The gap between electricity demand and supply widened to 3,226MW on Tuesday subjecting the citizens to long load shedding hours in the hot and humid weather and taking all sectors of economy closer to disaster. In its daily power situation report, Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) said that it could generate only 13,734MW electricity against the demand of 17,000MW.
Pepco continues to reiterate that the load shedding will significantly and gradually come down after increase in water releases from Mangla dam and addition of electricity from new power plants after 2nd week of current month. However, the electric supply company did not list the new power plants that it would commission after 15th of August to mitigate miseries of the citizens.
Exporters of various goods/products told Business Recorder that they were loosing their export contracts and paying heavy penalties to the banks for not fulfilling their commitments to export goods on time due to loading shedding and slow productivity of industrial units.
They said all the industrial units and cottage industries are daily closed for long hours resulting into delay and increased cost of products. “In business and trade, timely delivery of goods and fulfilment of commitment are ally important,” they added.
The Textile industry sources say that the textile productivity has come down by 50 percent due to the unscheduled and long load shedding of electricity. “The textile sector is presently exposed to tough competition and reached the brink of disaster as a result of forced loading shedding of electricity” they added.
