Ўзбекистон иқтисодчилари XIII форуми

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) one-hour electricity outage is 
associated with a reduction of 0.0651% in a firm’s total annual sales, while ownership of an electricity 
generator is correlated with an increase of 77.9% in total sales. In general, our findings are in line with other 
research studies findings [7], [8], [31], [37] arguing power outages deteriorate firms’ sales as well as firms’ 
profitability and productivity [6], [8], [9], [31], [32].
On the one hand, affected firms may not be able to offer competitive goods and services to the 
market due to transition to the production of less electricity-intensive products. So, persistent issues related 
to electricity supply that Uzbekistan has been experiencing prevented businesses from producing 
sophisticated products and providing services.
On the other hand, electricity blackouts might increase firms’ quit rate because mitigation strategies 
such as backup generators may not eliminate adverse effects [32]. Although ownership of electricity 
generators can compensate for power outages, it is associated with additional costs r elated to purchasing, 
installing, maintaining, and operating the generator [7]. Such expenses would increase firms’ costs by 8–
15%, which could be pricey for small firms [40], [41]. Despite own-generation efforts to have a stable 
electricity supply, self-generated electricity cannot be fully considered as an alternative to unreliable public 
supply because own-generation costs of electricity are roughly three times as high as electricity purchasing 
costs from public grids [42]. 

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Formal trainings organised by employers are associated with 61.5% increase in total annual sales. The 
sample of firms in our dataset accounts for 10.78% of total value added in 2018, while around 36% of firms in 
the sample reported the incidence of power outages. If these firms in the sample did not experience 1 hour of 
electricity outage, they would have created an additional value of 25.35 billion UZS, which could have 
contributed an additional 28.41 billion UZS or $3.41M108 to GDP observed in 2018. If we assume that the other 
firms share the similar conditions as the enterprises in the sample, 1 hour of an electricity outage would cost 
263.66 billion UZS or $31.62M
1
in 2018. 
On average, annual electricity outage for 2018 is accounted for 222.43 hours. On condition that firms in 
the sample do not experience an annual power outage of 222.43 hours throughout a year, the firms would have 
generated an additional $0.76B to GDP, increasing GDP for 2018 up to $49.52B or by 1.55%. Generalisati on of 
these findings to the whole population of firms implies average annual electricity disruption of 222.43 hours 
resulted in a loss of $7.03 bn in GDP in 2018. In other words, if firms were provided with stable power supply, 
Uzbekistan’s 2018 GDP could have been 14.42% higher ($55.79B) than observed GDP ($48.76B) in 2018. 
In this context, if Uzbekistan had developed energy market with strong private sector involvement and 
reliable electricity supply for businesses in 2018, it would have achieved higher macroeconomic performance. 
The results of our study are consistent with other relevant studies’ findings. Based on the experience of 137 low- 
and middle-income countries, Rentschler et al. [7]’s estimates showed electricity outages resulted in an annual 
loss of $82 billion in annual sales. As infrastructure investments affect long-run growth rate of the economy, 
total gains from those would have been even higher and generated additional externalities affecting both GDP 
growth and decent job creation.