ICE Ask For Annulment Of Approved Electrical Rate Decrease
August 28th, 2009 | by admin |Like a spoiled child not happy with a parental decision, the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) is seeking to overturn the decision of the Autoridad Reguladora de Servicios Públicos (Aresep) to reduce electrical rates by 7.2%.
The state institution (ICE) wants the decision by the regulator of public prices and services (Aresep) annulled.
ICE’s president, Pedro Pablo Quirós, said on Wednesday that the institution will be asking the Aresep to take a step back on the approval.
ICE considers the reduction, which affects all distributors of electrical energy in the country, including the Compañia de Fuerza y Luz (CNFL), an ICE subsidiary, as well as the Empresa de Servicios Públicos de Heredia, Jasec, and other electrical distributors in the country, will negatively affect the economics of the institution and the distributors that could result in black outs.
Quirós said that a formal request will be made today.
According to ICE it will lose some ¢10 billion colones in revenue in the last four months of this year if the reduction takes effect next month as ordered by the Aresep.
The Aresep decision came after a request by the Cámara de Industrias y la Asociación de grandes consumidores de energía based on costs savings by ICE in 2009.
The Cámara said in its filing that the ICE expenditure for bunker and diesel fuel used to produce electricity was much lower that the state institution had forecast and consumers should benefit.
Originally ICE said it would be spending ¢97.9 billion colones while a new calculation revealed that the cost was actually ¢45.5 billion colones.
