THE BPL FIASCO

BPL cannot keep the lights on in The Bahamas. They have some of the worst customer service in the country, a country in which bad customer service is legendary.  They are even worse than the Royal Bank of Canada, if you can believe this. Their power bills are amongst the highest in the region some say the world. So they can’t deliver power reliably and when they do deliver it, the price is astronomical.  The country is again exercised about these facts just delivered because the FNM government has now said they are coming with legislation for what is called a rate reduction bond.  This is a financial device which simply allows the legacy debt that was inherited from the Bahamas Electricity Corporation to be retired on easier terms for the corporation.  At the same time, BPL is seeking 350 million dollars of new money to pay for the new equipment that they will need. The total bill is 600 million dollars. How will they pay for it?  In order to avoid a government guarantee, they will tie it to the rates collected by BPL. So the consumer will have to pay by higher costs and the business community is howling. That caused the government to stop the forward movement of the legislation they were all set to debate last week. Philip Davis, now Leader of the Opposition,  formerly the Minister responsible for BPL, told the press that if the FNM had simply followed the PLP’s plan, the impact on the normal consumer would have been negligible and it would only affect  higher volume users .  But  the business community is panicked about this.  But of course, they voted to put the FNM in power and so they should suffer just a little bit for doing so, save and except that we all suffer.