Officials from the Beijing municipality said Tuesday almost 4,700 businesses will stagger weeklong shutdowns over the next month to ease an electricity crunch.
The State Electricity Dispatch Center predicted China will suffer its worst energy shortfall in 20 years this summer. Many cities have restricted power use by large consumers and ordered factories to stop work or introduce night shifts to cut electricity demand, Xinhua reported.
A spokesman with the Beijing municipal government told state-run media that workers from 962 Beijing-based industrial enterprises had started paid leave this week as the region enters the hottest time of the year.
Beijing Electric Power Corp says it has 58,817 industrial users in the Beijing municipality. The company says staggered shutdowns will ease power demand by 280,000 kilowatts. It also raised prices on July 1 in a bid to curb consumption.
Altogether 4,689 businesses will have "weeklong summer vacations for their employees" over the next month. The Beijing government issued a document saying affected businesses are allowed to adopt a temporary six-day week schedule to offset shutdowns and "catch up with their original production plans" this fall.
Lack of power production capacity most likely, but when I saw this and couldn't help but wonder if the high price of oil was connected in some fashion. |