The Ministries of Petroleum and Electricity in Egypt announced that the period of power outages across the country would be increased by an additional hour today, Tuesday only, “to coincide with some preventive maintenance measures in part of the regional gas trading networks with an increase in local electricity consumption rates, as a result of rising temperatures.”
Temperatures rose to nearly 40 degrees Celsius in Cairo on Tuesday, and are expected to rise further over the next few days.
The two ministries stated, in a joint statement, that this “necessitates increasing the load shedding period today only for an additional hour, in order to maintain the operational efficiency of the National Electricity Transmission Grid and the National Natural Gas Grid,” according to what Reuters reported.
Supplies of natural gas – which helps Egypt generate electricity – have declined at a time when demand for electricity has increased due to population growth, and the government has heavily subsidized energy prices for years.
Egypt began cutting off electricity for an hour a day last summer, and the period increased to two hours at the beginning of this summer.
The country has also faced a shortage of foreign currency needed to facilitate gas imports during the past two years.
Egypt has been seeking to reduce its support bill since signing a financial support package with the International Monetary Fund worth $8 billion last March.
The government raised the prices of a wide range of fuels last March, and also increased the price of subsidized bread four-fold on the first of this June.
