CARILEC survey says B.E.L. has 2nd lowest electricity rates

The Belize Electricity Limited has been in the headlines for some time over a number of issues ranging from court battles with the Public Utilities Commission, a claim it is bankrupt and electricity rates. But tonight B.E.L. is finding comfort in a survey which says the utility company is charging the second lowest electricity rates in the Caribbean. A survey done in 2008 by the Caribbean Electric Utility Service Corporation, CARILEC, ranked Belize as second only to Trinidad in mid 2007 and 2008 in the cost of power. The survey featured thirteen other countries in the Caribbean. In 2008, the average electricity rate in Belize was twenty-two U.S. cents per kilowatt hour. The highest electricity rate was sixty-one U.S. cents per kilowatt hour. According to the CARILEC survey, Belize was the only country that did not have a rate increase in 2008, despite an era of rising world oil prices. A B.E.L. press release this evening states that the survey results indicate that even if B.E.L.’s request in 2008 to adjust rates to twenty-five U.S. cents per kilowatt hour had been approved, Belize would still have remained among the lowest rates. The release also quotes B.E.L.’s Chief Executive Officer, Lynn Young, as saying that the Chalillo Reservoir enables optimum access to low-cost power from Mexico.