ICCI urges Pakistan government to evolve strategy for coal reserves: Steel Guru

The Frontier Post reported that Mian Shaukat Masud president and Mr Muhammad Ishtiaq Qureshi VP of Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry has called upon the Pakistan government to evolve a comprehensive strategy to exploit the indigenous coal reserves for generating cheap and dependable energy.

They said that it is really pitiable that despite having total coal reserves of over 185 billion tonnes and being the 6 largest coal rich country in the world, Pakistan is still an energy deficit country which showed our lack of planning and foresight to safeguard country's interests.

Mian Shaukat Masud said that Pakistan is spending about 60% to 65% of its total foreign export earnings on oil imports despite having an aggregate energy potential exceeding the combined energy potential of the entire resources of Saudi Arabia and Iran, which was really deplorable.

He said that “a World Bank draft report on Pakistan's Investment Climate has portrayed a dismal picture of the country's power sector that is riddled with inefficiency and corruption, though the sector was selling electricity to consumers at a rate that is 60% higher than in India and 40% higher than in Bangladesh. Frequent power outages, totaling 945 hours in a year, led to pushing up the cost of production in the form of forced overtime, waste of material, damaged equipment and an added maintenance average of 10 percent of annual sales for manufacturing sector which badly dented their profitability. He added that higher tariff charged in the country has not only hit productivity in all sectors of the economy, it has also eroded competitiveness of our exports.”

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