Power shortfall has crossed 4,000MW due to shortage of water and gas for generation purposes. Resultantly, power breakdowns in rural and urban areas have reached to long hours in the country. Canal desilting campaign would bring hydel generation to nil and shortage of gas is also hurting the power generation efforts in the country.

The government is yet reluctant to import furnace oil for power generation to shorten trade gap. This situation is resulting into the rise in loadshedding both for domestic, commercial and industrial consumers.

The industrial consumers are the worst hit, as they are denied gas supply owing to the fact that available gas is being shifted to power generation to IPPs from CPPs. It may be noted that Wapda-depended mills are miserably closed, as they are unable to keep their operations intact due to non-availability of electricity on the one hand and high tariff of Rs 12 per unit on the other.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2012