Georgetown: Prime Minister Samuel Hinds said over the past seven years the PPP/C foster development is being undermined by the actions of the opposition.
This was disclosed at a People’s Progressive Party/Civic press conference today at Freedom House, Robb Street, Georgetown.
“Our choices for development and the path for development have been challenged in the budget. There have been threats to make cuts, which go as the Finance Minister has been saying, to the core of the development of our country.”
The Guyana Power and Light Incorporated (GPL) suffer a five billion dollar chop out of the 10.2 billion subvention government allocated.
The Prime Minister said GPL is deserving of the allocations in the budget. He explained that there is a lot of money involved in running an electric utility that serves essentially 90 per cent of the country while also affecting to some extend water and telephone services.
“We come from a tradition where electricity has been very highly subsidised; we come from a tradition where people have tolerated others and themselves stealing electricity or making arrangements not to pay for the electricity they get,” Hinds underscored
Over the period 2003 through 2013 electricity consumers have been charged averaged prices that are in fact 16 per cent less than what is required. “If we sum up here we have foregone revenue, revenue that GPL should have received out of tariffs that they did not receive which total is a net figure of $27.8 billion…This is money that GPL needs and the way to get it, that I could think of, is from the budget.”
He noted that Government, as the owner of the company, is expected to finance improvements and rehabilitation works, “we have had over the last 20 years the growth of demand peak from about 30 megawatts to about 87 megawatts now…there is need for upgrade and these take funds.”
The Prime Minister said that GPL prices are high even as he shared his conviction that there is a grave misconception that such a state of affairs exists because of wastage and incompetence.
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