On 15/12/1992, Ahmad Bamarne, a member of the first round of the Kurdistan Parliament, wrote to his wife in France: "The situation in Kurdistan is very bad. There is only two or three hours of electricity.

Currently, some areas of Sulaimani have only (2) hours of electricity , in (24) hours. When In 1992, three hours of electricity was given to the citizens a day, "The reason is said to be “due to injustice in the distribution of electricity”

According to an official statement of the government, the monthly expenditure of electricity is (100) billion dinars, the cost of installing electricity smart meter was (300) billion dinars.

About (70) billion dinars monthly expenditure on generator rent which is paid directly by the citizens and the expenditure of the Ministry of Electricity for the generators is (17) billion dinars, but still there is no electricity.

From (1992 to 2022)

Currently, the electricity is reduced to the lowest distribution level in the Kurdistan Region. Electricity will be provided between 6 to 8 hours in average. However,some areas in Sulaimani have only (2-4) hours of electricity.

Experts and electricity officials, attributs the reason to (injustice in the distribution of electricity and ownership of Sulaimani that there is no one to defend).  

Demands on electricity

According to the official statements of the Ministry of Electricity, currently (3600) MW of electricity is produced in the Kurdistan Region, but the demand for electricity has increased to more than (6600) MW.

While the official website of the Ministry of Electricity earlier this month announced that "615 megawatts of electricity has been increased in the ninth cabinet" and power plants are opened daily and talk about increasing the amount of electricity production, but yet the government provides only (7) hours of electricity for the citizens.

Smart meters reduce electricity supply!

In May this year, a delegation from the Republic of Congo visited the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRG) and met with the Minister of Electricity, Kamal Mohammed.

At the time, the Ministry of Electricity claimed that the smart meter project had reduced electricity waste from 49% to 39%.

Kamal Mohammed is the electricity minister on KDP share in the government. He recently took over another ministry. He was appointed as acting minister of natural resources following the resignation of Kamal Atroshi.

There are 1.7 million electricity customers in the Kurdistan Region, of which 1.3 million have installed smart meters, which is 73% of the total number of electricity customers.

 Electricity supply has been reduced from 16 hours to 6 hours, contrary to the statements of the Ministry of Electricity, smart meters have reduced the time of electricity supply by 62%, while the cost of installing smart meters was about 300 billion dinars.

Electricity income and expenditure

There is a huge amount of money is spent on electricity in the Kurdistan Region, so that now more than (100) billion dinars are spent monthly for the companies that produce electricity.

In addition to the cost of electricity generation, the total monthly salary expenditure of the Ministry of Electricity (17 billion 850 million dinars), in addition to the money citizens spend monthly to buy electricity from private generators.

The number of electricity customers in the Kurdistan Region has increased to 1 million 776 thousand 963.

If an average of (4) amps per household of electricity from private generators is calculated and the price of each ampere is calculated at (10,000) dinars, then each family spends an average of (40) thousand dinars monthly to buy electricity from private generators, the average monthly expenditure of citizens to buy electricity from private generators reaches (71 billion) dinars.

Accordingly, the total cost of electricity in the Kurdistan Region, including the government's payment and the citizens' payment for generator rent, is more than (200 billion) dinars per month.

This expenditure comes at a time when, according to the statistics of the Ministry of Electricity, the monthly electricity revenue is about (50 billion) dinars. Last year, the total electricity revenue was (456 billion) dinars. Currently, the government owes about 1.298 trillion dinars to citizens and the government itself owes the companies $3.883 billion.