By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

FREE National Movement Leader Michael Pintard said the Bahamian people will now have to pay the bill for the “significant blunder” at Bahamas Power and Light by the government with respect to the fuel hedging that was put in place by the previous FNM administration.

His comments came in a press release issued after Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis announced upcoming increases in consumers’ electricity bills.

“Based on the announcement by the PLP government and the press statement released by BPL today, consumers in the Bahamas will now see an increase in electricity bills from the hedge price of 10.5 cents per kWh to a high of 27.6 cents per kWh as projected. Based on these figures, this represents an increase of 163 percent over the 10.5 cents per kWh that was enjoyed by all business and residential consumers over the past two and one-half years,” his statement noted.

The Marco City MP said the fuel hedge programme left in place by the Minnis administration was part of a wider strategy developed for BPL to bring efficiency, reliability, and cost stability to Bahamian consumers.

He said the strategy worked and saved the Bahamian people tens of millions of dollars in electricity costs.

“When the fuel hedging programme was initially executed in June of 2020, BPL completed a hedge transaction with the assistance of the Ministry of Finance and the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) that covered an initial three-year period where percentages of BPL’s projected annual fuel consumption were hedged in accordance with its established hedging strategy and policy that were put in place and approved by the FNM Cabinet,” he said.

 “Over the course of June 2020 through to July 2021, other hedge transactions were executed to ensure that additional projected BPL fuel consumption was hedged so that the Bahamian consumers could continue to enjoy low stable prices for electricity.

“There was a hedge transaction that we scheduled for the end of Q3 of 2021, but due to the change in administrations (on) September 16th this transaction was left to the new Davis administration to execute.”

In view of yesterday’s announcement, he said he believes that this hedge transaction nor any other additional hedge transactions were executed by the Davis administration.

“The question is why? PM Davis must come clean to the Bahamian people with regards to if additional hedging transactions were executed.”

He said the fuel component of the BPL bill “is scheduled to increase when everyone knows that the cost of oil on the global markets has been decreasing from a high of over $127 per barrel in March of this year to around $90 today”.

He said the Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority needs to weigh in on the BPL matter.

“It is clear that PM Davis has abandoned the strategy and the many initiatives that were working at BPL prior to September 2021, however he has yet to bring a coherent energy strategy to the Bahamian people. Our economy is still recovering from the pandemic, consumers are experiencing the pressures of inflation, and yet (Mr) Davis seeks to burden businesses and households with electricity cost increases that are historic,” Mr Pintard said.