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KARACHI, Sept 15: About 2,000 megawatts of additional power can be acquired by upgrading the current capacity, technical experts suggest.If the government places an order for power turbines to complement the power generating capacity in the country today the earliest these turbines can arrive is in 2009, an informed source told Dawn.

The Asian growth tide has created a major surge in demand for turbines by galloping economies such as China and India. The world suppliers of power generating equipment are struggling to meet the current stream of orders leading to a queue. New orders by aspirant countries involve a waiting time.

“For the time being, to meet the power shortfall the government may carryout maintenance and improve the power generating capacity of power installations in the country”, Farhat Ali, President and CEO of a multinational ABB, a leading power and automation technology company, said while commenting on power shortages in Pakistan at the Overseas Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the other day after a function.

Power shortage is said to be the single most urgent challenge on the economic horizon. There is little scope for the expansion of the industrial base of the country in a big way if measures are not taken to balance the infrastructural deficit. The primary sectors both agriculture and manufacturing has to pick up to maintain the current pace of GDP growth rate as it would be unrealistic to expect the services sector to continue growth if the base of the economy is not expanded.

The current growth in Pakistan’s economy is fuelled by the expansion in trading and services sector. “If you see the composition of high yielding sectors over the last three years when GDP growth rate was six per cent, the finance and telecommunication sectors stand out.

There are many more areas with high growth potentials as local demand has picked up for a variety of consumer items. If government succeeds in removing bottlenecks posed by the weak infrastructure the next five years will see high growth in many new sectors”, another professional manager observed.

The power shortfall by 2010 at the current pace is projected to be of the order of about 4,000-5,000 megawatts.