218
AFRICA
’
S SILK ROAD
:
CHINA
AND INDIA’
S NEW ECONOMIC FRONTIER
by exporter status. The figure shows that Senegal and Tanzania have the highest average
electricity interruption time, accounting for close to and 20 percent of production time, respectively. South Africa has
the best electricity supply, with only about 2 percent of interruption time. In terms of firm size, there is no particular pattern within each country that indicates a consistent correlation between the size of the company and the electricity supply.
On average, however, micro and small firms suffer more electricity interruptions than do large firms.
There are no consistent patterns among the four countries in terms of electricity interruptions between exporters and nonexporters. However,
the average of the four countries shows that exporters experience fewer power outages than do firms that sell products domestically.
Figure 4.19 shows the average percentage revenue lost due to electricity outages. The average revenue loss is consistently higher for nonex- porters than for exporters. This is an especially interesting case for Senegal,
where exporting companies experience more frequent average incidents of electricity outages but a lower percentage of average revenue loss. Also,
although Senegal has the highest percentage of electricity interruption
time among the four countries, its average revenue loss due to the electricity outages is much lower than that of Tanzania. One reason is that Senegal has better facilities and capacity to monitor electricity outages so that firms can report outages more accurately.
22
FIGURE 4.18
Share with your friends: