CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ma­yaro, Rush­ton Paray MP, is urg­ing the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) to con­sid­er ad­vis­ing the State’s elec­tric­i­ty com­pa­ny—Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC)—to adopt a slid­ing scale mod­el for the rate in­crease to all lev­els of com­mer­cial busi­ness­es.

The Ma­yaro MP made the rec­om­men­da­tion dur­ing the RIC's con­sul­ta­tion at the Ma­yaro Civic Cen­tre, yes­ter­day.

In a me­dia re­lease, MP Paray says he raised sev­er­al is­sues with re­gard to the pro­posed in­crease in T&TEC elec­tric­i­ty rates at the con­sul­ta­tion, in­clud­ing the com­po­si­tion of the pan­el and ex­pert ad­vi­sors on elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion cost mod­els.

"I al­so ques­tioned the ra­tio­nale be­hind wait­ing 17 years for a rate re­view and whether the pro­posed 140% com­mer­cial/in­dus­tri­al in­crease would lead to cap­i­tal flight and busi­ness re­lo­ca­tion,” the MP stat­ed.

“I al­so high­light­ed the im­pact of the pro­posed rate in­crease on the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, which is a sub­stan­tial for­eign ex­change earn­er," he said.

The Ma­yaro MP ex­plained why he rec­om­mend­ed the adop­tion of a slid­ing scale mod­el for the rate in­crease to all lev­els of com­mer­cial busi­ness­es.

"My po­si­tion was that the mar­gin­al in­crease to do­mes­tic cus­tomers un­der 400KW will be neg­li­gi­ble at a $0.02 cent in­crease per kilo­watt. How­ev­er, the sting in the tail would be the pass-on-cost for goods and ser­vices through the com­mer­cial sec­tor," he point­ed out.

MP Paray is of the view that the pro­posed rate in­crease mod­el, as it stands:

"…is un­rea­son­able and would erode the ad­van­tages that sub­si­dized rates have pro­vid­ed to the cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es in the Ma­yaro Con­stituen­cy, and Trinidad and To­ba­go in gen­er­al."