Bhubaneswar, Feb. 15: An index of economic growth, the state’s power consumption, has more than doubled during the last decade, the bulk of it being used up by industries.

Statistics show that while the annual power consumption of the state was 6,090 million units (MU) in 2000-2001, it was 6,745 MU in 2002-2003, which further went up to 9,288 MU 2006-07. In the next three years, too, the consumption kept growing steadily and touched 12,225 MU in 2009-10.

According to sources, power has been driving the engine of economic growth, which helped bring poverty down in the state by 11.73 per cent. The biggest consumers of power have been the domestic and the industry sectors with the latter racing ahead in comparison during the period between 2007-08 and 2009-10.

While the domestic sector accounted for the consumption of 35.68 per cent of the total power generated in the state in 2000-01, the share of the industry during this period was 42.06 per cent. The next year domestic consumption of 39.14 per cent edged past the industry which registering 37.68.

But that was the only period of slump for the industry which picked up the following year onwards with its power consumption level reaching 49.25 per cent in 2004-05 against 30.96 per cent of the domestic consumers. The gap between the two widened even more in 2007-08 when industries accounted for 56.59 per cent of the power consumption in the state in contrast to 24.90 of domestic consumers.

The higher trend of power consumption for industries continued in the next two years as well. This is significant considering that according to a report of the Orissa Electricity Regulatory Commission (OERC), the state in 2009-10, had a total of 27.79 lakh consumers, of whom, an overwhelming 24.65 lakh (88.7 per cent) were domestic consumers. The state’s industrial growth during the period was evidently on the fast track.

However, there were glaring disparities in the consumption of power during the last decade in the urban and rural areas. Even by the end of 2009-10, out of the state’s 47529 inhabited villages, as many as 17,794 (nearly 38 per cent) remained without electricity.

The percentage of rural electrification in districts like Kandhamal, Boudh, Rayagada, Koraput, Malkangiri and Gajpati was abysmally low going by the data available at the end of 2008-09. While in the tribal-dominated Gajpati district, only six per cent of the villages had power supply by that time, it was 7.13 and 14 per cent in the case of Malkangiri, Koraput and Rayagada districts.

The situation was not encouraging even in the case of Boudh and Kandhamal districts where 85 and 84 per cent of the villages respectively remained without power.