The blackout in Quito could create about $2.6 million in losses in the commercial sector during November, according to economic consulting firm Oikonomics, which showed that in the same month last year, sales were $15.8 million, with outages estimated at 13.2 million dollars.

These losses would be due to downtime, which would affect factors such as lighting, cooling, machinery and payment systems, which would discourage sales.

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Since last Friday, October 27, the Government has been implementing power cuts different schedules in almost all provinces of the country, in order to protect the system and avoid electrical collapse. Although the outages are expected to be mitigated with the contribution of power from Colombia (450 MW) and Peru (50 MW), from Monday, November 30 to Wednesday, November 1, outage hours have been reduced to 50%. which were initially three on the coast and four in the Sierra and Amazonia.

Oikonomics noted that the $2.6 loss projection is conservative, as additional factors such as spoilage of perishables due to lack of refrigeration, damage to equipment and systems, unplanned investment in power generators, among others, are not taken into account.

According to the report, between January and August this year, the main consumer of energy in the capital is the residential sector with 45%, followed by the commercial sector (24%); industrial (14%); others (9%); and public lighting (7%).

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In order to estimate the reduction in energy consumption that would be generated by the blackout during November this year, they took into account that the commercial sector will have a consumption similar to last year’s, 69,081,306 kilowatt hours (kWh), and under this premise, the capital’s business premises stopped consuming 11,513,551 ( kWh), which is equivalent to a 17% reduction in energy consumption.

“The commercial sector plays an important role in Quito’s economy, representing 25% of all active companies in the city,” the consultancy said.

He also pointed out that the sales of these companies between January and August 2023 increased by 4% compared to the same period in 2022, but if this month’s sales do not increase compared to last year, power outages would generate losses of exactly 2 dollars’ 642,684.02 during the penultimate month of the year.