GPL deserves its budgetary allocation – insists PM Hinds

Apr 23, 2013 News

– slams AFC claims of incompetency

The ruling People’s Progressive Party/Civic yesterday at a Freedom House, Robb Street, Georgetown, press conference continued its campaign to verbally bash the move by the parliamentary opposition to slash sections of its 2013 National Budget.
Last week, the parliamentary opposition, which is made up of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance for Change (AFC), during considerations of the budget estimates opted to completely chop the $1.25 billion allocation to the Government Specialty Hospital Project.

Prime Minister Samuel Hinds

Moves were also made to slash funding intended for the Government-operated media entities – the National Communication Network (NCN) and the Government Information Agency (GINA) – to a mere $1 each.
The Guyana Power and Light Incorporated (GPL) also suffered a similar fate with just over half of its $10.2 billion subvention being chopped.
Holding the majority in the National Assembly, the Opposition was in fact able to effect these cuts based on a prior ruling by the Speaker of the National Assembly, Raphael Trotman, who had deduced that the Constitution allows for the National Assembly to modify the national budget, which was earlier presented to the House.
Speaking at the press conference yesterday Prime Minister Samuel Hinds sought to underscore that efforts by the PPP/C administration over the past seven years to foster development is being undermined by the actions of the Opposition.
“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.”
As part of its developmental strategy, Hinds said that the administration is looking to work to re-fashion the traditional sectors of sugar, bauxite, timber and rice so that they become more efficient and can in time compete and stand on their own.
He said that Government has seen as imperative, the need to initiate a number of new projects that would bring about work opportunities for the future in areas such as tourism and Information Communication Technology.
It was against this background, he said, that Government has over the past seven years been rewarded with success not only for itself but for the people of Guyana who have also been working and contributing to growth and development.
He turned his attention to an AFC column published in the Sunday edition of this publication under the title ‘GPL is a liability to the people’. The column stated that “GPL is a huge black hole of inefficiency, mismanagement, waste and sqandermania,” allegations that the Prime Minister has dubbed as untruths.
He, in response to the column has, since inked a five-page open-missive to AFC Leader, Khemraj Ramjattan, which has been carbon copied to leader of the Parliamentary Opposition, Retired Brigadier David Granger, refuting the AFC claims.
According to Hinds, GPL is deserving of the allocations in the budget even as he explained that there is a lot of money involved in running an electric utility that serves essentially 90 per cent of the country.
He noted that the populace comes from a tradition which tends to believe that electricity, and to some extend water and telephone service should be provided almost as a right.
“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.”
The Prime Minister, in his presentation in parliament during the budget debate, had pointed out that over the period 2003 through 2013 electricity consumers have been charged average 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.”
The alternative move however, Hinds said, is that electricity consumers will have to be the ones meeting the financial need of the power company which are not only needful to negate potential tariff increases but also to facilitate improvement of the electricity system. He said that Government, as the owner of the company, is expected to finance improvements and rehabilitation.
“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,” asserted the Prime Minister.
Yesterday, he said that Government can show how the funding needs at GPL have arisen and also show that injected funds have been properly applied.
He also lashed out at claims 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. He added too that such views are farther from the reality as the rates obtained here are in fact comparable with that of the Caribbean.