Caption: Barry Padarath
By Alicia Chamely
THERE will be no increase in electricity rates at this time, as the government has rejected the Regulatory Industries Commission’s recommendation submitted in 2023.
This was confirmed on Thursday by Public Utilities Minister Barry Padarath at a post-cabinet press briefing held at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s.
Padarath said in keeping with the United National Congress’ campaign promises, he announced that the cabinet had officially rejected the RIC’s recommendations to increase electricity rates and confirmed prices would remain unchanged.
Reading the official cabinet note, he stated, “Cabinet agreed (a), to the reject the implementation of the final rates and charges for first year 2023 to 2024 of the regulatory control period 2023/2027 and, a subsequent annual tariff adjustment exercise for each remaining year of the price control period for the electricity transmission and distribution sector as approved by the RIC on September 21 2023. (B) That there be no increase in the electricity rate at this time in alignment with the government’s stated policy.”
In 2023, the RIC submitted a recommendation to raise electricity rates, which would increase the Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission’s revenues to $4.8 billion. It was argued that this increase in revenue was needed by TTEC to settle its outstanding debts and upgrade its operations.
The recommended increases would have seen residential rates raised between 15 and 64 per cent.
Rates would have also increased between 37 and 51 per cent for small businesses (B1) and ten and 12 per cent for larger businesses (B2), paying commercial rates.
Industrial users would have faced between a 58 to 126 per cent increase.
While the recommendation was never implemented by the previous People’s National Movement (PNM), it was never rejected either.
On the campaign trail leading up to the 2025 general election, one of the promises made by the UNC was that under their leadership they would reject the RIC’s recommendation and would not increase electricity rates.
Padarath strikes back at Gonzales
At an Opposition press conference on Monday, former Public Utilities Minister Marvin Gonzales questioned how the government planned to settle a $7 billion debt owed by TTEC to the National Gas Company (NGC) if they rejected rate increases.
Sharply responding to this, Padarath said, “Without being too unkind to the former minister it’s almost shameless for the former minister to have raised this particular issue because we didn’t just arrive at a $7 billion debt between TTEC and NGC. For the last nine and half years this debt was allowed to balloon unaddressed in two incarnations during the period 2015 to 2020 and 2020 to 2025 until the general election.”
Padarath questioned why Gonzales himself did not address this himself or why he did not address a further debt of $1.5 billion in receivables.
Directly addressing Gonzales’ question, Padarath said, “We intend on addressing that matter, just earlier today Minister of Planning, Minister of Finance and myself, we met and there is a payment plan that we will put in place, but we will want to have active consultation with the stakeholders within the industry both TTEC and NGC to come to the table to address those matters.”
Padarath said in the coming days the ministry would reveal more details of TTEC’s plans to settle its debts.
