The Guyana Power and Light (GPL) is projecting a deficit at the end of this year of $9.5b compared to the figure of $9.8b which was projected at the start of the year.
The Mid-year report for 2019 released last week by the Ministry of Finance said that at the end of June 2019, GPL recorded a cash deficit of $4.2 billion, compared to a cash deficit of $3.7 billion in the corresponding period last year.
GPL’s receipts totalled $15.7 billion at mid-year, a shortfall of $1.4 billion from the budgetary position, and $0.6 billion lower than the first half of 2018. This was mainly due to a fall in sales collection, which was a result of a 61.5 percent collection rate for Government accounts, and actual billed sales falling below budget by 3 percent.
Further, there was lower income from investments in treasury bills as well as from services provided by the company. These services encompassed new connections, reconnection, tampering charges and service investigation. Total current expenditure amounted to $16.4 billion, $925 million lower than the same period in 2018.
Fuel costs were $1.4 billion more than budgeted, due to payments made in January 2019 for a fuel shipment received in December 2018, as well as fuel purchased and supplied to Skeldon Energy Inc (SEI).
“While this was not catered for, GPL and SEI have a working capital agreement and the cost will be offset. In the first half of 2019, fuel rebate to customers totalled $2.2 billion or 13.4 percent of local sales, a slight increase from the $2.1 billion or 13.2 percent of local sales in 2018”, the report said.
The company was also forced to reschedule some of its capital projects due to repairs to its submarine cables which were damaged on two occasions in the month of June. The report noted that on June 2, GPL’s 69 kilovolts cable sustained damage resulting in the unavailability of 14
megawatts of generation to the eastern half of the Demerara Berbice Interconnected System. In the other incident, GPL reported that a ship’s anchor damaged its submarine cable connecting the Kingston, Georgetown and Vreed-en-Hoop, West Bank Demerara locations.
The report said that repairs to these cables were given high priority, and as a result, gross generation for the first half of 2019 totalled 419,942 megawatts, 23,728 megawatts higher than the same period last year, also supported by increased demand.
At the end of June 2019, technical and non-technical losses were 28.2 percent, compared to 29 in the same period last year. The company will continue to upgrade its networks to aid in the reduction of electricity theft through the installation of smart meters, and load balancing on low voltage and primary networks.
