The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has started the first phase of public consultations on the development of its new public utilities policy profile aimed at getting feedback from key stakeholders on priority areas of the policy profile.
The public consultation process, which started last Wednesday, aims to obtain feedback and comments on the priority areas of the policy’s profile from stakeholders such as governments, private sector organs, civil society, policy makers and experts to enrich the policy’s content and design.
The IDB has been a major financier of the Guyana Power and Light and itspredecessor the Guyana Electricity Corporation.
The objective of this policy is to guide the IDB’s actions to promote universal access and to increase efficiency and quality in the provision of public services in a sustainable, affordable way which contributes to the development process with social inclusion, the bank said in a press release. The bank also said that to promote universal access and to increase efficiency and quality, its actions should be oriented to promote access to the whole population and to offer a reliable service of adequate quality, under efficient conditions which in turn allow affordable prices, and to give final users incentives to make a sustainable-compatible use of the service.
The sustainability of the public services will be promoted along three pillars: financial sustainability: the revenues from tariffs, community support and budgetary support should be enough to cover the efficient costs of providing the service; environmental sustainability: the selection, execution, operation and maintenance of projects must comply with bank’s environmental safeguards and social sustainability: foster a better access for everyone, without discrimination and incorporating consultation mechanisms on relevant aspects of the services’ provision.
The consultative process will be conducted in two phases: the first one will focus on the policy’s profile which lays out its basic concepts and key elements. The second phase, which will be based on the draft of the full policy, will include inputs received during the first phase upon review and approval by relevant IDB authorities.
To participate in the development of the strategy’s draft profile, interested persons can visit the consultation’s web page, read the Public Utilities Policy Profile, and complete the online survey. Comments and ideas can also be sent to BIDinfraestructura@iadb.org. The consultation will stay open until August 2nd, 2013.
