P.U.C. gives its views on B.E.L. financial woes…

The Annual General Meeting of the Belize Electricity Limited took place on Monday afternoon. And according to the reports presented, the company is not on a sound financial footing. We aired the comments of Fortis C.E.O., Stan Marshall, that any investment at B.E.L. in the near future was off the radar because of the losses of ten point eight million dollars by the utility company in the past financial year. Well, Marshall was not the only one talking. While the regulatory body, the Public Utilities Commission, did not make a presentation at B.E.L.’s AGM, their Chairman, John Avery, did attend. And he gave News Five his view of the electric company.

John Avery, Chairman, P.U.C.
“We have seen where in the past year B.E.L. has been refusing to extend lines to hook up consumers. As far as we’re concerned, that is B.E.L’s main priority; to provide services. We, as much as possible, try to get other people to invest in generation, so that B.E.L. can invest in extending its lines and to provide service to its consumers. In fact the rate setting methodology that we employ actually rewards that type of investment. The bulk of the rates; the portion of the rates that goes to B.E.L comes from a return and depreciation on the assets they have. So that is where the bulk of their revenue that accrue to them come from. So what I’m saying is that our rate setting methodology has enough rewards in there if B.E.L. makes the type of investments it needs to make. The thing is B.E.L. doesn’t want—they want to make their own investments and just expect the P.U.C. then to retroactively include them in the rates and have consumers pay for them even if we see no real benefits to the consumers.”