Power company announces 20% cut in net rates for all categories

The Guyana Power and Light today announced a 20% cut in net rates across all categories.

A GPL press release follows:

20% Reduction in rates for all Tariff Categories

The Guyana Power and Light Inc. wishes to announce a 20% reduction in net rates for the supply of electricity across all Tariff categories effective April 1, 2016.

This was made possible after intensive review by the new Board of Directors in consultation with its Executive Management team. The Company took into account the reduction in world market prices for fuel over the past year, which has favorably impacted its overall costs and wishes to pass on the benefits of these reductions to its Customers.

This reduction will be applied as a 5% reduction on the basic rate of both fixed charge and energy charge, and a further 15% fuel rebate on the energy charge. Given that the Company had previously applied an interim 10% fuel rebate on the energy charge in March 2015, the overall effect would see an additional 10% reduction on electricity bills.

GPL would wish to reduce tariffs even further, but is constrained by its current level of overheads and moreso by the technical and commercial losses, which in 2015 amounted to 29.2% of dispatched power. These losses include losses in transmission and distribution due to aged infrastructure, as well as theft of electricity, meter tampering and other non technical losses.

The Company is actively engaged in addressing these losses and has approved a capital programme of G$9.5B. This programme is intended to replace old generating assets, construct and upgrade substations, expand and upgrade the transmission and distribution network, expand smart metering, amongst others.

In addition, GPL is engaged in a Power Utility Upgrade Program financed by the Inter American Development Bank (IADB) with grant funding from the European Union (EU) to the tune of US$64M. This Program is intended to strengthen management, improve operational efficiencies and reduce losses.

The Company recognises that there is some level of public dissatisfaction with its services and is committed to actively addressing all issues relating to this, including faster response times to customer queries, more efficient delivery of services, ensuring the integrity of its officers both internal and contracted, delivery of timely billing and information, amongst others.

GPL also recognises that our customers are the ultimate stakeholders and therefore is requesting the public’s patience and understanding. Additionally the Company’s significant losses due to electricity theft, tampering of meters, meter by-passes and other forms of dishonesty result in higher operating costs and GPL is requesting the help of the public in reporting and addressing these matters.

GPL New Rates

The new Net Rates can be seen in the table below:

Customers whose billing cycle begin in the part of March and end in April will benefit from the reduction on their entire consumption for this period. GPL will therefore, not prorate consumption when applying the reduced rate and fuel rebate.

This reaffirms GPL’s continued commitment in providing quality electricity supply at fair costs to our valued customers.