Daily Times

KARACHI: Despite claims by the government of bringing improvement in energy shortage, power generating machinery’s demand soared as the Pakistan spent $Rs139 billion on import of machinery during July-March of current fiscal, showing 42% growth over same period of last fiscal.

The nation consumed Rs 94.5 billion worth of imported power generating machinery in first nine months of previous fiscal year. This enormous rise clearly indicates that demand of power generating machinery is continuously putting pressure on import bill of Pakistan, as precious foreign remained on exile by import of generators.

Ahead of anticipated sultry weather conditions, during the month of March, the importers of this trade remained active as in the month of March alone, Pakistan spent Rs 15.89 billion only to import power generating machinery while the sum was enormously higher by 86 percent than the import bill of Rs 8.56 billion for power generating machinery in March 2015. However, import bill of power generating machinery registered 5 percent decrease over Rs16.67 billion in February 2016, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS)’s latest data.

It is to be noted that Pakistan’s monthly average bill for power generating machinery stood at $52 million by 2012, however lingering power outages pushed this bill gigantically up to $151 million on monthly average in 2016.

The government was continuously claiming addition of significant electricity in national grid during last year, but the statistics indicate that the countrymen still struggling to prevail over shortage of energy. New fiscal is still witnessing gloomy situation in terms of persisting power shortage, which has led to 12 to 15 hours power load shedding in the country.

Sultry weather conditions in Pakistan compelled public to pursue alternate energy sources, thus Chinese-made cheap priced generators have become primary choice especially for domestic users as well for industries.

Intensifying demand and supply gap in power sector leading to consumption of valued foreign exchange on power generation machinery imports every year. The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government could not bring much relief for the energy strapped country despite ruling almost three years.

The electricity shortfall reached almost to 7,000 megawatts this year while the country is generating 15,000 MW of electricity and the current demand is 22,000 MW. As of 2013, total installed electrical generation capacity in Pakistan is 21,593 MW and production approximately 15,000MW.

Frequent power failure has been raised a critical dimension in many towns and major cities of Punjab and Sindh, where load-shedding duration stretched to almost 12 to 15 hours. In this scenario, the demand of alternate energy products including electricity generators have emerged, and leading importers and wholesalers of generators are importing 70 to 80 percent electricity generators from China.