The Coalition administration was not paying its dues to the Guyana Power and Light Incorporated (GPL), which has now resulted in the company being financially unstable, says Junior Public Works Minister, Deodat Indar.
“Upon looking at the books of GPL, I’ve found that there is $13.1B that the government of the past five years, owes GPL. It seems that there was a national policy unwritten somewhere, that you should not pay your light bill,” he told the House moments ago, as the Budget 2020 debate continues at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, Liliendaal, Greater Georgetown.
This debt represents four percent of GPL’s 2020 budget, Indar added.
Not only is the company owed billions of dollars, but billions more are haemorrhaging from the entity, the minister noted. He said over the past three years, GPL racked up $8.7B in losses.
The Minister was quick to point out that given GPL is on wobbly financial footing, its capacity to produce power is being severely affected. This is further exacerbated by the lack of investment by the former regime to increase the power generating capacity of the utility company.
“Only US$1M was invested in five years to increase baseload capacity of GPL…That is why you are finding there are blackouts every day, everywhere, because there is zero revolving capacity at GPL…Every time an engine goes down, people get blackouts; [and] every time a wire is burnt,” he said.
