Younes Abbas Shamari is a carpenter with an open-air shop on Baghdad's Zawiya Street, which means he depends on electricity for most of what he does: sawing, drilling, sanding. These days, however, he rarely works, as the electricity is off more than it's on.

His workshop sits on a commercial strip in a relatively calm area in the central part of the city. Many small businesses here are in need of electricity to function, but Mr. Shamari estimates he gets just two hours of electricity for every four there is none. And that's twice the Baghdad average, this being one of the capital's more upscale neighborhoods.

Thanks largely to deteriorating security, electricity - along with water, sewage, and oil production - has dropped below prewar levels. Before the invasion, for example, Baghdad was receiving an average of at least 16 hours of power a day. Today, with insurgents targeting power plants and electrical lines on an almost daily basis, the city gets power just four hours each day on average.

"It's not enough to pay for the rent on my shop," says Shamari, whose salary supports an extended family of 13 in Diyala, outside Baghdad. "The rent is almost higher than whatever income I get from my work." He acknowledges that before the war, electricity wasn't nonstop, but it was available when he worked.

Iraq was generating 4,500 megawatts before the US invasion. But by November of last year that generation capacity had dropped to 3,995 megawatts, well below the national demand of 7,000 megawatts, according to a January report by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. Production has slumped despite the $3 billion - of $18.4 billion authorized for Iraq reconstruction - the US has set aside for electricity projects.

Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, testified Wednesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Iraq would need much more than the $56 billion estimated by the World Bank and UN in 2003 to rebuild Iraq. He didn't give a new figure.

Mr. Bowen told the committee that Iraq's water supply, sewer system, and electrical grid were worse off than once thought.

When fuel was still cheaper than water, before the government cut subsidies in December, Shamari made up for the lack of power with a gas-powered generator. But with the price of fuel now three to five times what it was just three months ago, that's no longer an option.

"How is Iraq supposed to make an economic recovery if businesses don't have basic necessities like electricity?" asks Humam al-Shamaa, an economics professor at Baghdad University. "And the lack of electricity affects security, too, because the streets aren't lighted after sundown and so businesses close earlier than normal."

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