From who is to blame to what happens next. BEL wants to raise the cap on its Cost of Power Adjustment, a move that could mean higher electricity bills for all of us. Prime Minister John Briceño said he understands the reasoning behind the proposal but stressed that his government is opposed to increasing the burden on consumers and is instead looking for ways to help BEL maintain service and keep the lights on without passing additional costs on to the public.
Prime Minister John Briceño
“I can understand where Ambassador Young is coming from. That what they did with COPA basically is to be able to – the prices can be adjusted up or down and there was an expectation that the price of diesel between now or certainly before the end of the year would have gone down, and by going down, then the prices of energy being sold to the public would be able to go down. Unfortunately, that has not happened. The fight continues in Iran. So under this automatic adjustments, it allow them to be able to do that without having to go through this very, very long process because it’s a process that takes six months, sometimes a whole year. And while that is happening, the company is either bleeding money or in some instances they’re collecting more than what they should be collecting from the public. This is how it is done in other in other countries that you have these automatic adjustments. That should be I think it’s no more than, I think 5% at the present. I may be wrong, so don’t quote me now about that, than the present what’s being quote. So that’s what they’re doing now, saying the prices continue to go up, so we want to have an increase. What I can tell you from us from the cabinet we are going to discourage that because as it is, we’re trying– we’re finding ways on how we can be able to provide the finances necessary for BEL to continue to provide the services to Belizean people so they could continue to have the energy that people need and keep the lights on.”
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