Industries slowing down: Power cuts cripple economic activities

LCCI chief asks government to share its energy plan

LAHORE: Drawing attention to the nation’s dire energy situation, Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) President Ijaz A Mumtaz has said that breakdown in power supply to the industry is hitting economic activities hard and the government should exploit all avenues in order to stop unscheduled outages.

In a statement, Mumtaz said prolonged power outages in industrial areas were jacking up the graph of unemployment, particularly hitting the daily-wage earners hard.

The LCCI president said most of the industrial units had already reduced their working hours and this led to heavy wastage of raw material, making production processes unprofitable.

Mumtaz said the shortage of electricity had caused capital flight and relocation of industrial units to countries like Bangladesh and Malaysia besides reducing government revenues drastically.

“The government should share its energy plan with the LCCI as power outages have crippled both trade and industry.”

Mumtaz said the government should understand that economic well-being was a must. “Unemployment, price hikes and industrial closures always give birth to lawlessness and anarchy,” he said. “Therefore, the government should understand the ground realities and reset its priorities as far as power generation is concerned.”

He said the private sector was an engine of growth and in developed countries it was facilitated to the maximum but in Pakistan the circumstances were the other way round.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 23^rd, 2015.

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