On Wednesday we told you that your light bill for January will be going
down by as much as 13%. That is because with plunging world oil prices, Belize
Electricity Limited owes consumers $17 million. And that’s why the PUC
decided to reduce the average electricity rate by 6 cents. It adds up to about
a 13% decrease for you and for BEL – the PUC increased its approved rate
of return – from 10% to 12%. So it’s something for everyone though
BEL doesn’t seem to be celebrating. But the PUC is; and at a press conference
this morning PUC Chairman John Avery said it is a win win situation.
John Avery PUC Chairman
“Overall there has been a reduction of 5.4 cents in the mean electricity
rate. This translates to about 13% reduction.
We could have reduced the price of power to 34 cents, the price for electricity,
but like I said we don’t want to have a negative impact on anyone. We
don’t want to be messing with the rates every month, that doesn’t
make sense; there ought to be some consistency in the rates. And so we considered
everything, we arrived at 38.7 cents. For a while there we had settled at 37.6
cents but then we got this scare earlier in the week when the price of oil seemed
to be going up and so we decided to put a little extra in what we projected
for the cost of power.
We would like to see these things hold so that we don’t have to touch
the rates again until July. But we will review it month to month and if conditions
stay how they are right now, the price of oil stays around say $40 a barrel,
then perhaps around March we will seriously consider making a further adjustment
to bring down the cost of power just a little bit more.
We’ve increased the portion of the rate that accrues to BEL, we’ve
increase the return. I can’t see why BEL would have anything against this
amendment. The cost of power has gone down, it is only reasonable that you reflect
that in the rates. We’ve increased the value added of delivery, that is
the portion of the rate that accrues to BEL so I can’t see why BEL would
object.
We are regulating responsibly for the entire sector, not any particular
stakeholder. And so even though economic conditions, I mean the customers have
received a reduction. We believe we have placed BEL in a better position to
expand the system as quickly as possible to get service to everybody out there.
You know how many people out there don’t have service. Now if we are to
sit here and say that we’re going to save people a little one cent more
and squeeze BEL or somebody a little bit and then we are neglecting to consider
the people out there who want to get new service.
So when we’re offering BEL a return on its assets of 12%, we believe
that puts BEL in a better position then to go and access financing to expand
the system so we can feed those people in those rural areas who everyday perhaps
complain that why people in Belize City can have power for the last 50 years
and we are out here and we can’t get not one kilowatt hour our way.”
BEL has been less than enthusiastic about the PUC’s decision
since they have an appeal of the original decision pending before the courts.
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