Electricity utility, the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) company says that although it pays less for fuel at the moment, it has no surplus monies and its focus this year will be on fixing its equipment and not on lowering domestic power tariffs.
“We thought it would have been irresponsible if we further lowered any tariffs and then have to come to central government to get finance to reequip GPL which I think will be about $75 billion,” Minister of Public Infrastructure David Patterson explained at a press conference last Thursday. At the forum, it was disclosed that power losses remain high.
Acknowledging that fuel prices have dropped by more than half on the world market, Patterson said GPL has no surplus cash and the monies saved will be channelled to fix the company’s equipment. “The price has dropped. We have examined the accounts of GPL, what is needed in 2016 is heavy recapitalization equipment wise,” the minister said.
Patterson said the utility, which has been heavily subsidised by government over the years, will not be receiving any such cushioning from government this year and, as such, is working on plans to maximize the monies they have saved from lower fuel costs. This includes replacing aged equipment utilising GPL’s revenues, among other plans.
According to Patterson, after repairs to GPL’s equipment are done, the tariff policy will once again be examined to determine if changes can be made at that time.
Questioned on whether GPL has enjoyed a “windfall” given the low fuel prices, he responded “Not at the moment. Not at the moment. Remember we are coming from a loss making entity so you just don’t become a windfall one just like that.”
“We do acknowledge that they are now breaking even, we did the numbers, myself and the Minister of Finance and then we checked how much it would cost to recapitalize the equipment and outlined nonprofit making and profit making that kind of thing,” he added.
Meanwhile, GPL says that power loss remains at just over 29% of electricity generated. The losses remain high despite millions of dollars spent to bring technical and commercial losses down to around 10%.
According to information provided by GPL at the forum, the total loss for 2014 was 29.6% while last year it was marginally lower at 29.09%.
Technical losses in 2014 amounted to 14% while last year, the figure rose slightly to 14.6%.
Commercial losses -theft of electricity – totalled 15.6% in 2014 and 14.5% last year. Generating capacity totalled 135.15 megawatts (MW) in 2014 while the corresponding figure for last year was 137.75MW. Peak demand was 119MW in 2014 and 117.8MW last year.
Under the Power Utility Upgrade Programme, the European Union and the Inter-American Develop-ment Bank are providing funding to reduce power loss, among other areas. High loss of power has been a recurring problem here.
