Delay in FTC hearing on electricity rate hike request

There has been yet another setback in the process to determine how much more consumers will pay for electricity.
After setting June 14-16 for a second public hearing on the Barbados Light and Power Company’s (BLPC) request for an 11.9 per cent rate hike, the Fair Trading Commission (FTC) must now reschedule because there was a “challenge with those dates in terms of availability of everyone”.
“We have to go back to the drawing table with the dates. We want to make sure that persons are able to fully participate,” the FTC’s chief executive officer Dr Marsha Atherley-Ikechi disclosed to Barbados TODAY on Thursday.
She declined to suggest new dates, especially since the availability of the panel of commissioners hearing the matter, the intervenors, and BLPC representatives must now be considered.
A second public hearing, which will follow the one late last year, was recently triggered by an application from the power company for the FTC to review its February 15 ruling on the proposed rate increase and to stay the enforcement of six challenged orders it had issued then.
Having experienced a number of delays during last year’s hearings due to, among other things, last-minute requests for additional information by parties, another setback came after the commission delivered its decision in February and gave the BLPC three weeks to make adjustments to its original request for 8.79 per cent for its rate of return.
The utility regulator said it would use the energy company’s revised computations to determine the final base rates.
The FTC had also said it would announce the new base rates in about a month, once BLPC submitted a compliance report containing all the required adjustments to its rate proposal within the three-week deadline.
However, by the time the deadline came around, the BLPC had challenged the ruling, calling for it to be reviewed and varied while also requesting a stay of execution.
The FTC has said an interim rate increase will remain in place pending the determination of the final tariff.
The utility regulator has assured consumers they will be refunded, with interest, if the interim increase in electricity rates is higher than it eventually grants BLPC.
(EJ)