The new Electricity Act – good, bad or ugly?
The much awaited draft electricity act designed to permit the restructuring of the electricity sector has received the approval of the Cabinet. To what extent the rest of the members of the Cabinet studied the content and the impact of the proposals made by the Minister of Power and Energy will be a question in the minds of many, who have even a nodding acquaintance of the intricacies of the electricity sector, which has very much been in the news.
This draft act is ostensibly based on the findings of the specialist committee appointed by the Minister to study and propose to the required re-structuring of the electricity sector, which was plagued by decades of strife and the accusations of corruption and mismanagement. The sector has become a mill stone on the people, with accumulated losses over the past decade alone estimated to exceed a trillion rupees.
The matters came to a head with many hours of power cuts which could have been a factor leading to the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa followed by the massive multiple hikes in the consumer tariff over the past year.
- Increase of 66% in August 2022
- Increase of 88% in February 2023
- Reduction of 14% in July 2023
- Increase of 18% increase in October 2023
So we are back to the February 2023 level of tariff now or even a little worse off.
https://www.ft.lk/columns/The-new-Electricity-Act-good-bad-or-ugly/4-756234
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FT Article 13th DEc 2023 (1)