The Egyptian government is taking urgent steps to end the power outage crisis following the end of July. Cabinet spokesperson Mohamed al-Homosany announced that Egypt will import 300,000 tons of diesel to handle any emergency increases in consumption, costing US$180 million.
Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly outlined a plan to provide the fuel needed for power plants and to import more natural gas, allocating one billion dollars for this purpose. The goal is to eliminate load-shedding for the rest of the summer.
The first batch of fuel is set to arrive at the beginning of July, with power outages reduced to two hours. By the third week of July, all batches are expected to be in, putting an end to the outages. Plans are in place to ensure that load shedding will not be an issue after summer.
The recent spike in black-out hours was due to technical issues coinciding with higher electricity usage, according to Homosany. Efforts are also being made to provide energy for factories, and a directive has been issued for stores to close by 10 pm to save on energy costs, with exemptions for supermarkets.