Power Cuts Will Severely Impact Growth: ASSOCHAM

ASSOCHAM has expressed its serious concern over the imposition of a two-day compulsory power holiday for the industries in the State of Telangana.

While all the segments of industry will face the impact, for small scale units it will be the death knell, said ASSOCHAM Secretary General D S Rawat.

Increase in the cost of production and the resultant loss in their competitiveness, owing to the use of alternative energy sources, can be sustained by some large industries for some time, but disruptions in the production schedules would make the SMEs find it difficult to meet their supply commitments, leading to loss of business orders.

The ASSOCHAM Secretary General said that ultimately this would lead to job losses of upto 50% in the factory sector.

In view of the impending economic loss and the concomitant labour unrest, the State Government must immediately explore the opportunities to normalize the power situation with the Centre Government.

The State should urgently be tapping non-conventional energy sources like wind power generation and solar photovoltaic, Rawat said, adding that districts like Palamur were blessed with long tracts of lands and good solar insolation.

"The total capacity of solar systems installed so far is insignificant as compared to the potential. Even of the sanctioned projects, only a fraction have installed systems to tap the energy. Thus, the new government must focus more on sanctioning new projects and implementing those projects on priority. Unused government lands must be allocated for installing viable concentrated photovoltaic and wind turbine generators," Rawat suggested.

Telangana was also endowed with abundant coal needed for thermal power generation, and the State needed to initiate measures to reduce the quantitative and qualitative shortfall in the supply of power, particularly for industries, by encouraging the private sector to participate in efforts to increase the generation capacity, he added. (INN)