Government has still not come up with the long term planning and strategies for energy generation, thus with the participation of Public and Private Sectors, a National Energy Strategy is needed to be developed to overcome the growing emerging crises and its related problems, Mahfooz Elahi has said, addressing a meeting of the Energy Committee of Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry.

He said that in April this year, government after energy conference, had announced different measures for the conservation of electricity, but there was no talk about generation of electricity to run the wheel of the economy and to get rid the menace of load shedding.

Mahfooz Elahi said that especially two days holiday in a week could not bring the fruitful results, whereas on other side that measure had badly affected exports and activities on the ports. He expected that with the government announcement to cancel Saturday leave, positive results would come.

The President said that government must seriously think to work on the National Energy Strategy to move forward in the comity of nations by exploiting available sources of energy. He said that policymakers, economists, Public and Private Sector representatives should form a nexus for developing a long term plan for power generation.

He said that government should invite international experts to help Pakistan in finding the viable solutions and in the lights of recommendations by all stakeholders; implementation should be made on priority basis to save the country from further economic damage.

Mahfooz Elahi said that industrial productivity is hampering greatly due to announcement of load management plans from time to time by the government that eventually hurt the exports of Pakistan, which is still hovering around at 19 billion dollars.

He said that India and other neighboring nations are taking rapid strides working on the national agenda. He said that these countries have emerged as economies of scales, thus Pakistan must move forward by having it comprehensive National Energy Strategy to give a bright future to the nation instead of putting it in more trouble.