Exporters say industrial wheel not spinning

Want load-shedding crisis to end; say line losses and theft need to be controlled.

FAISALABAD: Textile exporters in Faisalabad have opposed the proposed increase in load-shedding for industries and urged the government to shelve its outages plan to bring the economy out of stagnation.

Pakistan Textile Exporters Association (PTEA) Chairman Sohail Pasha, expressing extreme concern over the rising power shortfall, said, “Gas and electricity are the basic fuels of the industry; our production has already gone down 50% due to the gas suspension.

“It is sheer injustice that instead of controlling line losses and making arrangements to stop electricity theft, the authorities are busy worsening the situation,” he remarked.

Pakistan is endowed with plenty of renewable energy resources like wind and solar, which still remain untapped, highlighted Pasha, adding that, “Adoption and deployment of renewable energy resources can play a significant role towards power generation.”

He further observed that due to uncertain oil prices, there was a worldwide trend of nuclear power generation. At present, about 436 nuclear power plants, with cumulative net output of 370,326MW electricity were operating in 31 countries. In Pakistan, however, nuclear power has a share of just 1.7 per cent in the total energy mix.

The exporters stressed upon the government to speed up the construction of nuclear power plants, which are cost effective, safe and reliable. “Another good option is to exploit the huge potential of hydropower generation,” they said. Presently, only Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has the potential of generating 50,000MW hydropower.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 29^th, 2015.

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