The power supply situation in the country has gone from bad to worse, and could prove to be a dampener to economic growth.

Even before the onset of summer, the average and peak shortage of power is up by 1.5-2 percentage points, compared with a year ago.

The shortage is worse than that prevailing a decade ago, though there was some improvement in numbers in 2002-03, the first year of the Tenth Five-Year Plan.

Peak shortage in the current year so far (April-January) is at 13.9 per cent, worse than the 13.6 per cent gap in 1997-98, which had improved to 10.6 per cent in 2002-2003.

Average power shortfall in the current year is at 9.3 per cent, marginally better than the 9.5 per cent recorded in 1997-98, but far higher than the 7 per cent recorded in 2002-03.

"Economic growth would probably have been 1-2 per cent higher if these shortages were not there," said V Raghuraman, principal adviser, Confederation of Indian Industry.

The effect of this on economic and industrial growth could be higher when the continuing problems in adding capacity are factored in. Lack of power also affects irrigation in agriculture and hence, agricultural growth.

Only about half of the 41,000 Mw generation capacity planned to be added over the last five years, is likely to be commissioned. And this target did not take into account the faster-than-expected growth in the gross domestic product.

"This is a very visible manifestation of the resource crunch that a growing GDP faces," said Ajit Ranade, group chief economist, Aditya Birla Group. The gap has forced industrial and residential consumers to opt for costly captive power.

"We are used to living with the problem now," said CII's Raghuraman.