T&T has been recog­nised in the World Bank's lat­est Do­ing Busi­ness re­port for sig­nif­i­cant reg­u­la­to­ry im­prove­ments in its cost of elec­tric­i­ty con­nec­tions. The coun­try is ranked 10th among 189 economies world­wide for its ease of elec­tric­i­ty con­nec­tiv­i­ty, ac­cord­ing a re­port just post­ed on­line by In­vestTT.

Elec­tric­i­ty con­nec­tiv­i­ty can be one of the great­est bar­ri­ers for new and ex­pand­ing busi­ness­es. Ac­cord­ing to the 2014 re­port, "in 2013 the cost to con­nect a sin­gle ware­house to a pow­er sup­ply ranged from an av­er­age of $19,112 in South Asia to $38,500 in Sub-Sa­ha­ran Africa". In Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, the av­er­age cost was just un­der $25,000.

With T&T's new reg­u­la­to­ry changes, the coun­try's cap­i­tal con­tri­bu­tion costs have de­creased due to res­o­lu­tion of the free rid­er is­sue. Sev­er­al oth­er im­prove­ments ben­e­fit­ing new and ex­pand­ing busi­ness­es were al­so put in place.

The coun­try's ef­fort to ad­dress the is­sue be­gan in 2006 with the es­tab­lish­ment of a work­ing group of var­i­ous busi­ness­es by the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC), the of­fi­cial reg­u­la­tor. Mul­ti­ple rec­om­men­da­tions were put in place be­tween 2009 and 2013. As a re­sult, the busi­ness in­vestor com­ing to T&T now ben­e­fits from a set of clear, for­mal cap­i­tal con­tri­bu­tion poli­cies and cal­cu­la­tion meth­ods, as well as de­fined, trans­par­ent process­es for ad­dress­ing typ­i­cal is­sues such as ex­emp­tions, re­im­burse­ment and dis­pute res­o­lu­tion.

The RIC brought to­geth­er in­di­vid­u­als from many eco­nom­ic lev­els and var­i­ous cul­tur­al and busi­ness groups to tack­le the prob­lem. Their first step was to ex­am­ine T&T's ex­ist­ing pro­ce­dures and reg­u­la­tions for cap­i­tal con­tri­bu­tions and to look at what util­i­ties in oth­er economies were do­ing to ad­dress the cap­i­tal con­tri­bu­tion is­sue.

As a re­sult, new and ex­pand­ing busi­ness­es now ben­e­fit from a set of clear, for­mal cap­i­tal con­tri­bu­tion poli­cies and cal­cu­la­tion meth­ods, as well as de­fined, trans­par­ent process­es for ad­dress­ing typ­i­cal is­sues such as ex­emp­tions, re­im­burse­ment and dis­pute res­o­lu­tion.

The process­es, all put in place by 2013, in­clude a re­im­burse­ment plan to share as­sets with cap­i­tal con­trib­u­tors once ex­pan­sion costs were re­couped from lat­er cus­tomers. An­oth­er re­quires T&TEC, the coun­try's sole re­tail­er of elec­tric­i­ty) to demon­strate that a new con­nec­tion would not be com­mer­cial­ly vi­able with­out a cap­i­tal con­tri­bu­tion.

T&TEC must al­so show that the cost in­curred would be no more than that re­quired to be com­mer­cial­ly vi­able. Fi­nal­ly, T&TEC is re­quired to keep a list of pre-qual­i­fied con­trac­tors for cus­tomers, spec­i­fy­ing tech­ni­cal cri­te­ria and in­form­ing cus­tomers about the av­er­age costs of work in var­i­ous ar­eas.Busi­ness­es com­ing to or ex­pand­ing in T&T are ben­e­fit­ing from the elec­tri­cal con­nec­tiv­i­ty cost sav­ings, more pre­dictable cap­i­tal con­tri­bu­tion cal­cu­la­tions and even­tu­al par­tial re­coup of their con­nec­tiv­i­ty in­vest­ment.