Georgetown : The Government of Guyana has been channelling significant sums of money toward the provision of electricity to customers on the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) grid, with over US$225M invested from 2006 to 2012.
Chairman of GPL’s Board, Winston Brassington said this investment has been funded mostly by the Government of Guyana and through various loans, at an interest rate of 3 % from agencies such as the China Import-Export Bank, Petro-Caribe Funds and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB.) To a smaller extent, the investment was also funded by GPL itself, Brassington stated.
He explained that $44B or US$18M of these funds went into generation and this included the investment to double the company’s Wartsila capacity. It invested in increasing its Wartsila capacity from 40megawatts in Demerara to a level of 105 megawatts, the position it will achieve at year end, when the new Vreed-en-Hoop plant is completed.
Transmission and distribution also accounted for US$13B of the investment. Brassington explained that some of this is financed by the Chinese Import-Export loans and include creating an integrated network between East Berbice and Demerara, construction of seven new sub-stations and catering for upgrades. In addition, there was the $1.8B invested in metering, the over $1B in loss reduction activities, and other investments.
For 2012 alone, a total of $10B or US$50M was invested in GPL, Brassington said.
You must be logged in to post a comment.