KARACHI: Chairman of National Business Group Pakistan and President of Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum Mian Zahid Hussain said that expensive electricity has become a huge problem for the people and a punishment for the industry.
He said that the most important electricity sector has become a national issue due to incompetence, corruption, and failed experiments. The losses in this sector run into trillions of rupees but no reforms are seen as the policy of continuous rate hikes is ruining the economy.
Mian Zahid said that Pakistan has not been able to compete with its rival countries in the international market because the electricity in these countries is very cheap compared to Pakistan. The foreign customers of Pakistani companies are not ready to bear the burden of our dysfunctional power sector.
He said that the local industry does not have to compete in the export market, but after inflation of up to 40 percent citizens are not left with money to buy anything except food, so the industrial sector is badly affected.
He said that due to the decline in local demand, the industrial sector is forced to reduce its production, which has also drastically reduced the consumption of electricity and gas, and the entire burden of these wrong policies will be put on the people, making their condition even worse.
Millions will be unemployed due to reduced production of industries making goods for the local and foreign markets while the losses of the power sector will continue to jump.
He said that incentives should be considered so that the full capacity of power plants can be utilised which is necessary to boost the economy. He said that textile exports have decreased by 6.50 percent in the first five months of this year and a further decrease is expected.
In the first five months of this year, the exports of the textile group were 6.883 billion dollars, which was 7.361 billion dollars during the same five months last year. In November also textile exports decreased by 8.26%, which is disturbing.
"The consumption of electricity in the public and industrial sectors is continuously decreasing but regardless of consumption, the government has to pay capacity payments to power producers, increasing the losses of this inefficient sector," he said. He said that if electricity rates are not reduced production, exports, employment, and income will be adversely affected.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023