Saturday, May 12, 2018

Why the Utility Regulatory Authority Should Be Scrapped

Given the size of our island prices of energy sources can and should be determined by Cabinet after some analysis is done at the Ministry of Finance. The more so that the link between international energy prices and what we pay for them here has been severed for almost a decade to finance a flat tax which has broken our economy. Even some back-of-envelope calculations would be a big improvement. This is especially true in a global environment where clean energy is becoming increasingly cheap and abundant as storage options expand.

We certainly cannot consider the price of water in isolation – the CEB and the CWA regularly clip an annual combined surplus of around Rs2 billion – especially when we've been ripped off with uncompetitive electricity prices because of abusive and confidential contracts or Ministers who don't know what they are doing. The argument that the CEB produces less than 50% of our electricity and therefore disqualifies it as the one who sets its price is ridiculous because it is an institution that belongs to every Mauritian even those that are shareholders in the IPPs.

No comments: