By FARRAH JOHNSON

Tribune Staff Reporter

fjohnson@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMAS POWER and Light CEO Whitney Heastie said he believes the company is well on its way to becoming self-sufficient and non-reliant on government funding.

In a press conference at the company’s headquarters, Mr Heastie said BPL has executed a strategic plan that has helped the company begin the process of addressing its shortfalls.

“We believe we have begun to correct the inefficiencies of our national electrical utility and that BPL is at last on a path that will lead to self-sufficiency and an end to government subventions,” he said. “This is due in large part to the steady execution of our strategic plan.”

Mr Heastie made the statement after speaking about BPL’s “first ever fuel hedge transaction,” which has set the fuel charge for BPL customers “at about 10.5 cents per kilowatt hour from July 2020 through January 2022.”

He said: “As I said earlier in announcing the hedge, fuel is a pass-through cost, therefore there is no savings to the company. All savings go to the customers and those savings can be significant.”

Mr Heastie said hedging has brought “stability and predictability” to fuel costs in a way that has never been seen in the country before. He added that the “conservative view is that projected savings for the average customer will be about 30 percent (now) through January 2022.”

When asked when customers could expect to see improvements to their bills, he stated: “There are two components to the bill. One is the tariff that has always been set and now the fuel charge which is the second component, which will be set at about 10.5 cents. The only other variable that the customer sees is the consumption rate and so that is totally in the hands of the consumer.”

He added that as the fiscal year continues, BPL plans to “roll out” more projects that will help them “gather and process necessary information to improve energy efficiency, manage costs more effectively and improve customer service.”

BPL chairman Donovan Moxey, also said he believed BPL had an incredibly positive year in the 2019/2020 fiscal period.

“Our growth has been steady and despite the extreme challenge of the global COVID-19 pandemic, our hardworking team...are all working together to right the ship here at BPL,” he said.

When asked what he would say to critics who believed there was no appetite for BPL’s debt on the market as it related to the rate reduction bond, he stated: “Within the rate reduction bond legislatively, we’ve gone to and had Parliament approve the imposition of a newer charge on everyone’s bill. And so that particular charge that is associated with paying back investors, is covered in law. So when you talk about an appetite for BPL’s debt, what you’re taking on is a very different structure than one would normally expect to as part of a bond.

“...We’re trying to get the rate reduction bond completed as quickly as we possibly can. Ideally for us we’d like to get it done before the end of this calendar year.”