Dar es Salaam — The recent power rationing has affected 87 per cent of the country's businesses that use electricity, a new report says.

The survey, conducted by Synovate, a research firm, has established that during the power cut about 45 per cent of the businesses do not operate until power from the national grid was restored.

But, about 54 per cent of the businesses that use electricity in the running of their activities used alternative power sources.The report indicates that 71 per cent of the businesses that used alternative power sources in the event of a power shortage used generators to operate. Only a small proportion of them used solar power and manual power in the running of their business activities after power cut.

The report argues that the amount of money spent in alternative power varies from business to business, depending on the nature and operations of the business.

It says about 52 per cent of the users of alternative power sources spend to a maximum of Sh30,000 per day.The remaining 48 per cent of them indicated that they incurred a loss of between 30,000 and 50,000 per day.

But, the report argues, looking at those figures it indicates that the small businesses, which were the economy movers, were mostly affected by the power shortages. Several business people who responded complained that the power cut schedule was not consistent because various businesses were experiencing variations in the power schedule.

At least 20 per cent of the business people said the power rationing was not predictable. For the business to cope with the costs that they were incurring they choose to mainly limit expenditure, they used their savings to ensure the business continues.

Consumers have also been affected by the costs incurred given that 16 per cent of the businesses that use alternative power have pushed the costs of alternative power to the consumers, in that they have increased prices of their products to cope with the costs incurred.

Unfortunately for some businesses, it had a negative effect to a point that they stopped for some time.