Daily Power Cuts become official

TIRANA, Dec.8 – KESH announced official hours for power cuts admitting the severe energy crisis that ha shit the country. In rural areas, Albanians face power cuts of up to 20.5 hours a day power utility KESH said on Friday. The restriction on the electricity supply is an effort to avoid worsening the energy crisis. Provincial cities will have blackouts up to 13 hours while Tirana up to six hours, KESH said in a timetable of the cuts. KESH executive director Andi Beli said last week that hospitals, embassies, water supply stations, bakeries, police and government institutions will be given priority power supplies. KESH offsets electricity shortages mainly through imports because the existing hydropower stations are outdated. The drop in imports of cheaper energy from countries like Bulgaria and Romania is the main reason for the crisis, according to Beli.
This week, KESH plans to urgently import 101,000 MWh from Greek, Slovenian and Swiss firms for the three months to end-February, while next year it will import 2.206 million MWh of electricity. Last year’s power crisis affected the country’s economic growth lowering it to 5.5 percent from initially forecast 6.0 percent. It paralyzed the business activity and led to severe economic implications for the habitants.