By
Dr. Aisha Ghaus-Pasha
Table of Contents
Page No.
1. Causes of Power Outages
1
2. Quantifying Outage Costs
2
3. Incidence of Outages
4
4. Pattern of Direct Costs
5
5. Types of Adjustments to Outages
5
6. Extent of Recovery of Output
6
7. Total Outage Costs to the Industrial Sector
6
8. National Costs of Load Shedding
7
9. Policy Implications
9
9.1.
Investment in Power Sector
9
9.2.
Load Management Strategy
10
9.3.
Information Flows and Customer Education
10
9.4.
Pricing Policy
11
List of Tables and Boxes
Table 3.1 Incidence of Loadshedding, 2008
4
Table 5.1 Types of Adjustments To Loadshedding
5
Box 1 Sample Distribution by Industry Group, Process and Location
3
Box 2 Total Costs of Loadshedding to the Industrial Sector
6
Box 3 National Costs of Loadshedding
8
Box 4 Comparison of Estimates With the Earlier Results (1984-85 Study)
8
Box 5 Policy Recommendations by Sample Units
9
Box 6 Short-Term Policy Recommendations
11
Annex 1
12
ECONOMIC COST OF POWER SHORTAGES IN THE
INDUSTRIAL SECTOR OF PAKISTAN
The year 2008 witnessed a major increase in the frequency and intensity of power loadshedding or outages generally in Pakistan and in particular in the industrial sector. A manifestation of this problem can be seen in the large number of reports in the popular press of high incidence of outages and protests, by not only the domestic and commercial, but also industrial consumers.
We have also seen, during the course of the year, complaints by the various chambers of commerce and industry and other industrial associations in the country that the level of production in a number of industries has been reduced due to the persistence of outages which apparently have fundamentally disturbed the normal rhythm of the production cycle in a large number of industrial units, especially