C.E.O. of B.E.L. discusses utility issues
For months Belize Electricity Limited C.E.O., Lynn Young, has remained silent on the company’s ongoing disagreements with the Public Utilities Commission. This morning, however, Young appeared as a guest on Open Your Eyes, breaking his silence. The C.E.O. maintains that when the price of oil skyrocketed in early to mid 2008, they experienced severe financial difficulties and were unable to access capital and that government had to step in to pay some of its loans. Towards the end of the year, Young says, things started to look up as world oil prices fell and record hydro production were recorded. Because they are only starting to regain their financial footing, the utility believes the timing and the amount of increase in rates that the P.U.C. wants to implement is too much if the company is to remain stable.
Lynn Young, C.E.O., Belize Electricity Limited
“I was really in a state of shock when the P.U.C. said they were going to reduce the rates in January because that you put us right back where we were in July. I think that now that we have paid off those loans, I think there is an opportunity for us to do some kind of reduction in rates on a go forward basis, but not the kind of reduction that the P.U.C. is looking at and that is the issue that I think why we had to go to court and ask the courts to put a stop to this until we sort this thing out.”
“The problem we are going to have with the approach they are taking is that we can’t get financing because the banks, the investors are looking at this and saying there is no certainty here; this looks kinda risky. In fact the last amendment that the P.U.C., we had been talking with FirstCaribbean to try and reinstate our financing and the manager told, Mr. Young this is even worst because you never know when the P.U.C. is going to change something and suddenly your ability to finance loans disappears. So because we are a regulated business, whether or not we get financing depends on having sensible regulations in place that are going to be consistent. You can’t just change it every month or every three months because things have changed.”
“One of the big issues for us is that the P.U.C. just keeps making up rules like that and we are saying that listen, these rules need to be done properly with proper by-laws and passed as by-laws. First of all, the rules have to make sense and give the company the—because it doesn’t help anybody if B.E.L. cannot provide the power supply, it cannot pay its bills. It’s fine for us to say we’re going to cut electricity rates by fifty percent and then when you do it, the company can’t pay for diesel etcetera and then you start having blackouts and then you’re gonna see hell break lose. So that doesn’t make sense. You have to be sensible about how you do these things.”
According to Young, Belize is among the countries with the lowest electricity rates in the Caribbean.
