Prime Minister Mia Mottley has made it clear that she will not allow Barbadians to become “tenants in their own land”, as she accused the island’s sole electricity utility company and the regulator of engaging in a “cat and mouse game”.
In fact, delivering her approximately four-hour Budget in Parliament on Tuesday evening, Mottley said her administration was prepared to take action by way of changes to existing legislation to ensure more timely decision-making.
She said Government was still keen on achieving the island’s ambitious renewable energy target of 100 per cent reliance on renewable forms of energy by 2030 despite the constraints, including being able to access electric vehicles and batteries for electricity storage.
“We cannot permit the transformation . . . of this country to be hampered by a tiresome cat and mouse game between the Barbados Light and Power and the Fair Trading Commission. Bajans cannot be the losers in this game, and this is what will happen if the cat and mouse game does not stop,” said Mottley.
She suggested that the Barbados Light & Power Company (BLPC), which is seeking approval for an 11.9 per cent rate increase from the Fair Trading Commission (FTC), was delaying getting some products into the island. She chastised the FTC for taking too long to make decisions.
“After 100 years, the Barbados Light & Power as a monopoly provider should know that it has to trust this country and its people a little more and does not need to delay the procurement of things in a difficult supply chain environment such that when we resolve the issues you can’t even find the things to buy for under two, three or four years,” said Mottley.
“Similarly, the Fair Trading Commission must understand that delay is the obstacle to progress in this world, especially where commodities are difficult to access,” she said.
On February 15 of this year, the FTC announced that it had denied a series of the utility company’s requests in its application for a rate increase, which would impact on the final figure.
The regulator said at the time that it was awaiting more information from the BLPC to determine the final rate, and it had given the company three weeks, which would be followed by a decision two weeks later.
However, the utility company, which was granted an interim increase of between $1 and $3 per month for domestic customers effective September 16, 2022, has challenged some aspects of the February decision, resulting in a further delay.
Mottley, while opting not to go into further detail declared: “Suffice it to say, the process needs deconstruction again, and if [it] continues to be the subject of delay, the only losers will be the country and people of Barbados.
“We don’t produce the materials necessary to participate in most of this. But having said that, we believe we can still set the ambitious targets and we intend to meet our policy objectives. We have to create space to encourage investment by foreign service providers because all can’t come from locals,” said Mottley.
“Similarly, we have to ensure that the price of electricity doesn’t go too far out of whack so that it is uncompetitive . . . If we wanted the cheapest electricity rate we would offer it to a single provider because of how small we are, and probably foreign capital that is achieved at a far cheaper price than what we might have achieved locally, but what we want is balanced development because Bajans cannot be tenants in their own land,” said Mottley.
She said she accepted that the electricity rate may have to be increased given the increase in the number of people selling power to the national grid.
She promised that her administration would “manage, on a very granular basis”, the connection of renewable energy systems to the grid, as she suggested that this process was still taking too long.
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