Industrial output across
the country has been badly hit by the ongoing Power crisis. It could further worsen
in the coming months as the power situation is beginning to hit more factories
across the country.
With no end to the
ongoing power crisis that has been sparked by a severe coal supply crunch, most
States have resorted to load-shedding of 8-14 hours for industrial consumers.
Following is the State wise scenario on the power crisis:
Punjab :
State has asked the foundries to down shutters for at least three days a week. The
power cuts range from 2-4 days for the furnace industries and one day a week or 24 hours for all the remaining industries.
Haryana : Industries
are grappling with nearly 14 hours of cuts daily from 00:00-08:00 hours and
again from 18:00-24:00 hours
Andhra Pradesh: Industrial units are facing a three-day power holiday and four hours of power
cuts daily.
Karnataka:
The state is resorting to a scheduled system for industrial units in a
desperate bid to reel demand; 3.1 lakh industrial units are said to be facing a
production loss of more than 60 per cent on a daily basis due to power supply
disruptions.
Maharashtra: Load-shedding
has been reported mostly in the industrial belt of Thane and Nashik.
Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal: Industry is facing more hours of outage as the utilities are running
out of funds to buy power in the spot market.
Coming against the
backdrop of slowing growth, the power crisis threatens to derail factory output
further. The April-August Index of Industrial Production (IIP) data had come in
at 5.6 per cent against 8.7 per cent a year ago.
“The worst affected
are the medium and small units that rely on the grid and use mostly small and
inefficient diesel generating sets as backup,”a senior official at the Central
Electricity Authority (CEA) said.
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