Blackouts will not deter investments in Guyana - Minister Indar

Blackouts will not deter investments in Guyana – Minister Indar

Apr 17, 2024 News

Minister within the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar sharing remarks during the Local Content Summit

…says recent power outages due to Ramadan and Navratri

Kaieteur News – To the rest of the world, Guyana is an oil rich nation, but to Guyanese, it is a blackout plagued country that desperately needs its electricity woes addressed.

The daily power outages that affect the country are however not hindering investors, according to Minister within the Ministry of Public Works, Deodat Indar.

Indar was participating in a panel discussion at a Local Content Summit hosted at the Pegasus Hotel and Corporate Suites on Tuesday when he told participants that the electricity woes in Guyana have been in existence under successive governments.

He went on to explain that the recent power outages are as a result of the two failed engines that are managed by a local company, Power Producers and Distributors Inc. (PPDI).

Due to the engine failures, the Minister explained that 13 megawatts (MW) of electricity were taken off the national grid. According to him, “We don’t have enough spending reserve to deal with the growing demand. Everybody has (air-conditioner) AC. It was Ramadan month and it was Shivaratri; go to all of the Mandirs, all of the Mandirs have ACs, all of the churches have AC, all of the Mosques have AC. You in your houses have ACs, the new housing developments that we have, have ACs.”

Since 2020, approximately 25,000 to 27,000 new clients have been added to the customer base of the Guyana Power and Light Inc (GPL). Self-generating companies have even turned on to the national grid due to the incentivized cost of electricity enjoyed by customers of GPL. New businesses and the increase in housing developments across the country have also compounded the situation.

The Minister was keen to note that the People’s Progressive Party when it assumed office was cognizant of the need for more power to be generated which made the Gas-to-Energy (GTE) project a key solution. Even though the project has been delayed and is now expected to start up in 2025, Indar assured that the constant blackouts is temporary and will be addressed.

In fact, he noted that a Turkish power ship will leave arrive in Guyana within the next 15 days.

“The ship, tomorrow I was told is gonna leave Cuba to come to Guyana. We are expecting it within 15 days to hook up and will put 36 MW in the system and that will increase our baseload to deal with the blackouts,” the Public Works Minister noted.

Indar said that the country will have approximately 500 MW of power when the GTE project is completed and comes on stream. He explained, “So those engines that we have now, although they are old, you can service them and have them in reserve capacity so if you have unusual spike in demand, you can employ them back.”

The Minister therefore said, “I don’t think it (blackouts) will be a deterrent. I don’t think investors when they come to Guyana, look at what happens in the next two weeks, or what happens in the next month. They look at the immediate term or they look at the medium and the long term.”

blackout, deter, Electricity, Indar, investors

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