Friday, December 30, 2011

Electricity tariff hike depends on Treasury response

By Ifham Nizam

The Public Utility Commission of Sri Lanka will submit, by January 01, its proposals regarding the increase of electricity tariffs.

‘The Island’ learns that the Commission’s Chairman Dr. Jayatissa de Costa and the committee members are awaiting the written response of the Treasury regarding its readiness to bear any loss incurred by the Ceylon Electricity Board as a result of maintaining current tariff rates.

However, Dr. Costa believes that the current electricity tariff can be maintained without amendments for six months.

Meanwhile, he rejected reports – not in ‘The Island’ – that the cutoff point of 90 units per month for the concessionary rate would be reduced to 30 units.

He said that 78 per cent of the electricity consumers were in the low income group and they use less than 90 units per month.

The Power and Energy Ministry said that the estimated losses for 2011 would be nearly Rs. 17 billion.

However, others pointed out the losses could be between Rs. 25 and 30 billion.

CEB sources said that the prevailing weather pattern could be one of the major contributory factors.

The CEB recorded a net profit of five billion rupees during 2010 thus marking a turnaround for the entity that was making consecutive losses since 2000.

During 2010, it earned 121 Billion Rupees by selling electricity, while along with other income the total revenue reached 125.48 billion rupees. The total expenses of the entity during the year amounted to 120 billion rupees.

http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=42145

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