LAHORE: The Lahore Chamber of Commerce has expressed deep concern over the rising energy crisis and urged the concerned authorities to act promptly and control the situation immediately.

“Pledge by the Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to put load-shedding to an end soon is good but the immediate measures are direly needed”, LCCI President Mian Nauman Kabir said while talking to a group of businessmen.

The LCCI president said that power outages, coupled with faults in distribution system and rising circular debt, are making way for a challenging state of affairs which need instantaneous attention of the concerned authorities.

He said that energy is a key to development and uninterrupted and affordable supply of power is essential for accelerated economic growth. Energy is also an important economic indicator and its availability/shortage encourages or discourages the local and foreign investors.

He said that major reason of gap between demand and supply is dependence on fossil fuel for power generation. He said that energy shortage in Pakistan has underlined the need for diversification from conventional and costly power generation methods to low-cost and multi-purpose methods and technologies for energy efficiency.

Mian Nauman Kabir said that according to a report, Pakistan has a total installed capacity of over 37,000 MW and fossil fuel (oil & gas), hydro and coal are the principal sources. He said that a chunk of electricity is being produced through fossil fuel. Pakistan cannot afford to continue with costly imported oil. He said that promotion of other resources for power generation would drastically reduce the oil import bill and shrink the gap between imports and exports.

The LCCI president said that promotion of alternate energy resources would definitely curtail the burden from conventional energy systems, therefore duties and taxes on the equipment being used for power generation through alternate energy resources. He also called for a balanced energy consumption mix and exploitation of indigenous resources.

LCCI Senior Vice President Mian Rehman Aziz Chan called for energy efficiency measures saying that it would save huge capital, improve the economy and the environment. He said that the government should launch an awareness campaign for energy conservation and should also promote modern technologies in this regard. He said that energy-intensive industries must adopt energy efficiency measures that would give huge financial benefits.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022