Despite announcements of 74 billion Afghanis in investment in Afghanistan\u2019s power utility, access to electricity remains limited and unstable across large parts of the country, and residents in several cities complain of repeated outages, especially in winter.<\/p>\n
Ahmadjan Bilal, head of the Taliban administration\u2019s companies department, said at a ceremony in Kabul and Parwan on Tuesday, 31 September, marking the start of a power project, that about 74 billion Afghanis had been invested in the Breshna electricity company over the past year. According to him, the investment was made for electricity generation, network expansion and the construction of substations, with funding provided by domestic and foreign investors.<\/p>\n
However, United Nations Development Programme figures show that only 40% to 42% of Afghanistan\u2019s population has access to the national power grid. Based on these figures, nearly 90% of urban residents have access to electricity, but rural communities remain largely deprived of this service.<\/p>\n
The UN agency said on 1 September that after decades of war, Afghanistan still remains among the countries where access to energy is insecure. According to the report, annual per capita energy consumption in Afghanistan is about 700 kilowatt-hours.<\/p>\n
Despite earlier promises by the Taliban administration to increase domestic power generation and expand energy projects, Afghanistan still imports most of the electricity it needs from neighbouring countries, especially Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. Dependence on imported electricity, low domestic production capacity and the lack of a regular national grid have made power cuts a lasting problem in many areas, especially villages.<\/p>\n
Residents in several Afghan cities also say electricity shortages and repeated outages, particularly in winter, make daily life and business activities more difficult. According to them, in some areas electricity is available for only a few hours and sometimes not until late at night.<\/p>\n
Afghanistan meets about 80% of its electricity needs from abroad. The Breshna company is the main body responsible for electricity distribution and management in the country, a sector that, despite strong public demand, still faces infrastructure shortages and heavy dependence on imports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Afghanistan says it invested 74 billion Afghanis in power, but electricity access remains limited and imports still supply most demand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-important-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}