رابطه مصرف برق و رشد اقتصادی : تحلیل علیت جمع و جداگانه در هند و پاکستان

This paper empirically examined the causality between electricity consumption and economic growth in two densely populated countries in South Asia, India and Pakistan. The causality analysis was estimated at aggregated and disaggregated level where the focus of the analysis was on the agricultural sector. The disaggregated causality analysis indicated a bi-directional causality between the agricultural electricity consumption and the agricultural GDP in India, while in Pakistan the causality was found to run from agricultural GDP to agricultural electricity consumption. At the aggregated level, India confirmed conservation hypothesis while Pakistan confirmed feedback hypothesis. From the public policy point of view, it can be inferred that, at the macro level, any electricity conservation measures in India will not have an affect on India's increasing economic growth prospects and hence a policy-favourite supply-enhancement strategy in the form of increasing electricity generation needs to be balanced with a demand-management strategy. In case of Pakistan any such policy recommendation is difficult given the bidirectional nature of causality.

Growth process in an economy is energy intensive and hence the importance of energy (particularly electricity) in the growth process is universally accepted (Ferguson and Wilkinson, 2000 and Stern and Cleveland, 2004). Electricity is an indispensable factor and plays an essential role in the consumption and production processes in an economy. India and Pakistan are the two large South Asian neighbours who have experienced high increase in electricity consumption and an increase in the gross domestic product (GDP) over the past four decades. This article aims to analyse the Nexus between the electricity consumption and economic growth in India and Pakistan. Whether there exist a causal relationship and in that case the direction of causality between electricity consumption and economic growth? This study undertook an aggregate level analysis and also disaggregated sectoral causality analysis1 – the agricultural sector in both the countries – and in the process went beyond the usual practice of restricting the analysis to aggregate level. A disaggregated sectoral level causality analysis with a focus on agricultural sector has rarely been addressed in the voluminous electricity-economic growth literature, both at global level as well as in South Asia. The empirical literature, as pointed out in Table 1, on electricity consumption and economic growth Nexus has not been able to infer conclusively the direction of causal relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth. There is no singular (directional) trend at a global level on whether electricity consumption causes economic growth or vice versa. The empirical literature on electricity consumption and economic growth at global level has shown all the four possible causal relationships: growth hypothesis, conservation hypothesis, neutrality hypothesis and feedback hypothesis (for details see: Payne, 2010)2 to hold true for one country or other, with each of the hypothesis having their own policy significance.Even for a single country, contrasting results was observed with changes in the time period of the data and/or econometric techniques used for the analysis3 (Ozturk, 2010 and Payne, 2010). For example, for Pakistan, the electricity consumption and the economic growth data for 1971–2003 concluded that economic growth causes the electricity consumption (Asghar, 2008), whereas for the period of 1955–1996 it was concluded that it was electricity consumption that was causing economic growth (Aqeel & Butt, 2001). In case of India, four out of five studies concluded that either electricity consumption had no causal relationship with economic growth or it is the economic growth that caused electricity consumption. But Gupta and Sahu (2009) argued that the electricity consumption causes economic growth. The present study used the latest data series available for India and Pakistan, from 1972 to 2008, and in the process addressed some structural constraints pertaining to data on Pakistan used in other studies. While most of the studies concerning Pakistan has taken a time period prior to 1972, but the data-set prior to 1972 also included the data for Bangladesh (then East Pakistan), and thus is erroneous while drawing a policy inference for today's Pakistan. Such a conclusion was reached as none of the study explicitly mentioned if their data prior to 1972 was only restricted to then West Pakistan (now Pakistan) or also included data covering the different districts of then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). The data before 1971 might have structural breaks which was not encountered in the above mentioned studies for Pakistan hence might challenge the inferences drawn. For this reason, the data for Pakistan before 1971 has to be treated with caution. In this paper the disaggregated analysis focused on the agricultural sector because this sector continues to be the most important sector in both the economies at least in terms of providing direct and indirect employment: the employment in this sector accounts for nearly half the total population of the country (FAO, 2009).4 This study sticks to the most prevalent bivariate model for analysing the causality relationship. Before going explicitly into the methodology and the modelling part, in the next section some contextual information on the electricity scenario in the two South Asian neighbours is provided. Section three explains the empirical approach employed by this study. Section four deals with the data used for the study and its sources. Furthermore, this section also provides a comprehensive causality analysis results at total and per capita level for the aggregate-level analysis and the agricultural sector for the disaggregated level analysis, for India and Pakistan. Finally, the paper concludes with some policy guidelines derived from the analysis.

The paper undertook a causality analysis between the electricity consumption and economic growth, at aggregated and disaggregated – agricultural sector, in India and Pakistan. The study indicates that in the short and in the long run, in India, economic growth is determining factor behind the increase in electricity consumption, both in total and in per capita terms. Hence, the causality analysis for India confirms the existence of conservation hypothesis. These results are contrary to the findings of Chen, Kuo and Chen (2007) and Asghar (2008) but in agreement with the findings of Gupta and Sahu (2009) and Ghosh, 2002 and Ghosh, 2009. For the Indian agriculture sector the nature of causal relationship is bidirectional both in short and in long run thus confirming a feedback relationship between agricultural GDP and agricultural electricity consumption. The results in this study confirms the evolving importance of energy-intensive groundwater irrigation and the declining importance of the energy-friendly canal irrigation in the Indian agriculture scenario (Choudhury, 2007 and Shah, 2009), particularly in the states which have contributed a large share to the gross agriculture production at the national level. The switch from the surface irrigation to energy (electricity) intensive groundwater irrigation was a result to greater ownership and control of the latter. Over the years the rural electrification programs, a change in the fuel for water extraction from costly diesel to relatively inexpensive electricity, groundwater development schemes like the Million Wells Program, and – most importantly – the political economy relating to electricity tariff (Shah et al., 2004), has contributed to the increase usage of groundwater within the country. On one hand, the groundwater irrigation powered by electricity in most of the agriculturally developed states of the country has been the driving factor of agricultural production. On the other hand, in the process of increased groundwater abstraction aided by the tariff policies many of these states in recent years have experienced agriculture growth but at the cost of deepening water table, which also meant more hours for pumping groundwater and hence an increase in agriculture electricity consumption. The findings from the aggregate level causality analysis indicated that in India electricity conservation strategies can be undertaken without any deteriorating impact on the country's economic growth. Within the government parlance, though the demand management strategies have gained some importance over the years to cut down the electricity demand-deficit both at the peak13 and the non-peak period, various policy documents underline the continuing and overwhelming importance of a supply enhancement strategy. To illustrate, various planning document of Ministry of Power and Central Electricity Authority of Government of India shows that while the cumulative installed capacity of last sixty years of hydropower plants in India is around 38,848 Megawatts, the Government of India plans to enhance the installed capacity by 25,316 Megawatts during the 12th Plan period, 31,000 Megawatts in the 13th Plan period, and the remaining hydropower potential of 36,494 Megawatts by the end of the 14th Plan period (CEA, 2008a, CEA, 2008b and MoP, 2008). Also, the Government of India plans to construct a giant trans-India water grid in the form of inter-linking of the Himalayan and the Peninsular Rivers (NCAER, 2008). It is true that India still needs more electricity generation to support its burgeoning electricity demand in the years to come especially when more and more household in the hitherto non-connected (and de-connected) areas are connected to the electricity grid. But our analysis show that supply enhancement to support economic growth need not be the sole strategy and demand management strategies needs to get more importance than it currently receives. Reducing the transmission and distribution losses, which currently is nearly one third of the generation – can increase the total electricity available in the grid from the existing generation capacity. The state of Gujarat, through Jyotirgram Yojana, has shown how co-management of groundwater and electricity could be undertaken ( Shah & Verma, 2008) and given the importance of groundwater in different states of the country such innovative management needs to be strongly encouraged in other states. The findings from this study confirms that electricity conservation strategies like enhancing the electricity consumption efficiency, tariff based on principle of marginality for electricity consumption particularly for the agriculture sector could be undertaken without affecting the high growth that the country is currently experiencing and is expected to experience in the future. For Pakistan, at total and at per capita level, a bidirectional causality relationship is found to exist between electricity consumption and economic growth. This implies that electricity consumption has pivotal role to play in economic development of Pakistan. In addition to that, the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) of Pakistan should continue to explore innovative and new ways for expanding the supply of electricity, e.g., hydroelectricity, renewable energy and alternative energy sources which are cost effective and stable compared to fossil fuel. Pakistan has already adopted Model Village Program (MVP) in which the main source of electricity is renewable energy (solar energy) for each and every household in that MVP. This can also be extended to other areas of the country to reduce the energy demand and to also the harmful pollution affects. At the sectoral level in Pakistan, agricultural GDP is the determining variable that caused agricultural electricity consumption both in short and in long run, thus conservation hypothesis was found to exist in Pakistan's agriculture. This implies that various energy conservation measures and policy decisions like introduction of electricity taxes and price discriminated electricity tariff across different hours in a day could be undertaken for electricity conservation without affecting the agriculture GDP. Also, as is argued in case of India, by reducing transmission and distribution losses (T&D) more electricity from the existing installed capacity could be brought into the grid. By adopting different energy conservation measures through efficient management, energy related pollution and emissions can be limited and hence more energy can be made available for economic productivity which then would reduce the economic losses experienced by the shortage of electricity supply. Thus, in agriculture sector of Pakistan, energy efficiency and conservation can ensure better economy and environmental sustainability. Thus, a well-designed energy policy can play a crucial role through providing incentives for conservation and energy efficient technologies to secure these gains.