Electricity sales up: PLN

State-owned electricity company PT PLN said that electricity sales in the January-May period of this year totaled 88.1 TWh, an 8.12 percent increase compared to the same five-month period of last year, driven particularly by higher demand from industries and businesses, Investor Daily reported on Thursday.

The paper quoted Head of Commercial Division at PLN, Benny Marbun as saying that in May alone, electricity sales increased by 8.58 percent year-on-year to 18.27 TWh, also driven by stronger demand from industries, which accounted for 31.7 percent of sales.

Benny said that the strong demand from industry-category customers came following a number of incentives launched by the government to help accelerate economic growth. The incentives include tariff discount for industries. He added, that going forward, PLN is ready to provide more incentives for the customers.

Electricity sales tumbled in 2015. It started to increase again in recent months, Benny said, although it has yet to reach the 2014 level.

Meanwhile, electricity sales to household customers in May grew by 8.77 percent year-on-year to 7.9 TWh. (*)