Thursday, April 19, 2012 -
Uzbekistan’s statistics committee on Tuesday reported that national electricity production did not edge up slightly in the first quarter of 2012 year-on-year as earlier thought, but actually decreased.
The Uzbek state number crunchers had said electricity output in the country rose 1.3 percent to 52.4 billion kilowatts per hour during the January-March period, compared with last year.
But this week, the Uzbek State Statistics Committee said output actually fell by 4.5 percent in Q1 2012, the Interfax news agency reported.
The sector is dominated by state-owned electricity producer Uzbekenergo whose power stations provide 98 percent of the country’s electricity.
Uzbekistan’s coal sector fared much better.
Coal production was up by one-quarter year-on-year in the January to March 2012 timeframe, according to the government figures.
The committee said coal production in the first three months of this year amounted to 980,000 U.S. short tons, an increase of 25.1 percent compared with the same period in 2011.
It said total coal output last year came to 4.2 million tons, a 5.9 percent increase over 2010.
State coal producer Uzbekugol controls the sector, accounting for more than 90 percent of the country’s total production.