Iraq Says Power Grid Won't Be Fully Restored Until 2011

Dec 23, 2008 - Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Iraq's power grid is not expected to be fully restored until 2011 - eight years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein - the electricity ministry said on Tuesday.

"Citizens will (by 2011) have electricity for 24 hours a day with no cuts," minister Karim Wahid was quoted as saying in a report issued a day after Japan opened its $118 million Samawa plant in the southern Muthanna province. The country's power installations were bombed, looted and sabotaged during and after the 2003 invasion, leaving many residents with as little as four hours of electricity a day.

The electricity shortfall forced many Iraqis to buy their own generators in 2004, and by 2006 many people had banded together and subscribed to large collective generators run by entrepreneurs.

Wahid said residents currently receive about 10 hours of state-produced power a day.

In the face of long unfulfilled U.S. promises that the supply of electricity would be properly restored, Baghdad residents still largely rely on privately run generators to power their homes in a city of six million people.