JEDDAH, 29 August 2006 — Electricity power cuts in the Central and Eastern Provinces causing heavy losses have emphasized the need for the government to carry out new power projects required by the country’s growing population, businesses and industries.

According to press reports, power blackouts caused financial losses of more than SR1 billion to industries in the two regions. The reports identified that the nonfunctioning of a transformer was the main reason for the power cuts.

Economist Abdullah Al-Muallami said the justifications made by the Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) for the power cuts were not convincing. SEC had said that it cut supplies to factories in order to cater to the needs of hospitals, houses and educational institutions. “The disruption of electricity supplies to all factories in the two regions without conducting a proper study was not justifiable,” he said in published comments.

During the last five days, the losses amounted to about five percent of its total production in Riyadh and Eastern Province. “The company should have backup facilities to meet such emergency situations,” Muallami pointed out. He also expressed his surprise at SEC calling experts from Japan to repair the transformer and emphasized the need for training Saudis to carry out such maintenance work, instead of waiting for expensive Japanese or other foreign experts to arrive.

“SEC should have sent some Saudis for higher studies and training to countries that manufacture equipment and machinery of power plants,” he added.

He also said that if the company had linked its power plants in different parts of the country with a grid, it could have avoided such power cuts. SEC, however, failed to carry out such projects because of its financial constraints.

Turki Hussein Fadaak, another economic analyst, had another view of the losses incurred by industries. He said industries should also bear part of the blame for not providing alternative power supply arrangements.

“These industries should know that such power cuts can happen at any time and they should prepare for them by installing generators,” he said.