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Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Padarath says Govt sticking to its promise: No hike in electricity rates

by

GEISHA KOWLESSAR ALONZO
23 days ago
20250519
Minister of Public Utilities  Barry Padarath

Minister of Public Utilities Barry Padarath

ROGER JACOB

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment is stick­ing to its promise not to in­crease elec­tric­i­ty rates, thus far.

This was re­it­er­at­ed by Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath, who told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the Gov­ern­ment would hold true to its promise it made on the cam­paign trail not to raise elec­tric­i­ty rates at this time.

“In the lead-up to the gen­er­al elec­tion, Mrs Bisses­sar-Per­sad, Prime Min­is­ter, had ad­dressed these is­sues as it re­lates to pub­lic util­i­ties. We took the po­si­tion then that at this time, there would be no move by the in­com­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion to in­crease any rates, whether it be wa­ter or elec­tric­i­ty. We hold true to that po­si­tion that we promised the elec­torate,” Padarath said.

How­ev­er, he said the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to re­view the op­er­a­tions of pub­lic util­i­ties com­pa­nies, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion, to im­prove the qual­i­ty of sup­ply and the man­age­ment be­fore any­thing else is fur­ther done.

“So that is the po­si­tion that we have tak­en. I know that the rec­om­men­da­tions from the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) were sent to the then-cab­i­net. Oc­to­ber of this year will make it two years since that pro­pos­al was sent. I don’t have the de­tails just as yet in terms of what those rec­om­men­da­tions would have been. What I can tell you is that we in­tend on keep­ing our promise to the elec­torate and the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go with re­spect to not in­creas­ing wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty at this time,” the min­is­ter added.

The RIC, which reg­u­lates the de­liv­ery of ser­vices by T&TEC and WASA, had rec­om­mend­ed an in­crease in elec­tric­i­ty rates and ser­vice charges for T&TEC cus­tomers and had pro­posed that all rates—for res­i­den­tial, com­mer­cial and in­dus­tri­al users of elec­tric­i­ty—in­crease by vary­ing amounts.

It had al­so rec­om­mend­ed that cus­tomers be billed on a month­ly cy­cle in­stead of the ex­ist­ing bi-month­ly cy­cle, adding that cus­tomers would be billed un­der a four-tier rate sys­tem in­stead of the pre­vi­ous three tiers.

Res­i­den­tial cus­tomers were ex­pect­ed to see an in­crease from 15 to 64 per cent; com­mer­cial cus­tomers will in­crease from 37 to 51 per cent, and in­dus­tri­al cus­tomers were ex­pect­ed to see an in­crease from 58 to 72 per cent.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to econ­o­mist Dr

Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon on whether the Gov­ern­ment ought to re­vis­it rais­ing elec­tric­i­ty rates.

He said that while some fis­cal con­sol­i­da­tion is nec­es­sary, it should not come at the cost of sharply in­creas­ing the cost of liv­ing and do­ing busi­ness, as the RIC’s 2023 rate pro­pos­als would.

Not­ing that the last RIC re­view was in 2006, with a sin­gle ad­just­ment in 2009, Ar­joon sug­gest­ed a more bal­anced ap­proach would have been grad­ual, in­cre­men­tal in­creas­es over the past 14 years – far less dis­rup­tive to house­holds and the pri­vate sec­tor, com­pared to these re­cent rate pro­pos­als.

“While our rates are in­deed low­er than the rest of the re­gion, the key dif­fer­ence is that we are a gas-based econ­o­my and it would be more ap­pro­pri­ate to com­pare our­selves to oth­er gas-based economies, es­pe­cial­ly since our elec­tric­i­ty is gas-based.

“Our res­i­den­tial rates per kWh are ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$0.052 which is high­er than Nige­ria (US$0.032), An­go­la (US$0.016), Al­ge­ria (US$0.04). While oth­er coun­tries like the US, Cana­da and Den­mark charge more at US$0.16, US$0.123 and US$0.366 per kWh re­spec­tive­ly, they al­so of­fer high­er min­i­mum wage than our econ­o­my with more ad­vanced health care and so­cial ser­vices, school­ing, in­fra­struc­ture, ac­cess to potable wa­ter, hous­ing etc, sug­gest­ing bet­ter val­ue for mon­ey and qual­i­ty of life,” Ar­joon ex­plained.

He said the rates pro­posed would hurt the com­pet­i­tive­ness of the pri­vate sec­tor and dis­cour­age ad­di­tion­al in­vest­ment.

Fur­ther, Ar­joon said food prices would al­so in­crease as su­per­mar­kets would have to pay high­er elec­tric­i­ty charges which would be passed on to con­sumers.


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