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by Meb Cutlack
Fortis Inc, BEL and our
deceitful PUP government have all along cited the cost of the Chalillo
dam at $30,000,000 but now it is revealed that the dam has cost
$100,000,000.
What does this mean for Belizeans? It means staggeringly high
electricity bills for Belizeans for the next 50 years and huge profits
for Fortis Inc, in Canada and for their servants here. It also means
that any hope of cheaper electricity for Belizeans (from sources such
as biomass, or even from our own high quality recently discovered oil)
will not bring down the cost of electricity because Fortis will demand
their pound of flesh first - in U.S dollars.
The crazy and illegal charade of BTL going to money lenders to get
overpriced U.S dollar to pay its foreign owners will seem nothing
compared to what BEL has to do in the future to pay Fortis its blood
money in U.S currency.
The PUP government has, by its stupidity and greed in flogging off all
of Belize’s utilities (and everything else like the Ports, the Fort
George area, the Printers, and the Airport) sold off at fire sale
prices the birthright of all Belizeans and it has mortgaged the future
of generations of Belizeans yet unborn.
As an industry source pointed out: “ This is certainly one of the most
expensive dams per megawatt in history: about $20 million U.S. per
megawatt, where a viable dam costs about $1 million per megawatt.”
It means in fact that Belize has an amortized debt to the tune of
approximately 500 billion dollars or 2,000,000 per head to be paid by
2040 , and that’s just for electricity. Don’t begin to think telephone
or even water (when that’s resold to foreigners again) because the
figures are too horrendous to contemplate.
And now, besides having possibly the most expensive electricity in the
world, Belize has the honour of being the ‘star’ of all of Fortis’s
energy companies - returning, quarter after quarter, the
proportionately highest earnings of any of the company’s subsidiaries.
On reason why this is so is that all of the dam’s electricity output is
sold to Belize Electricity under a 50-year franchise and ‘Power Purchase
Agreement’ via the Corporation’s wholly owned indirect subsidiary, (BECOL)
Belize Electric Company Limited. Thanks to the PUP government’s illegal
generosity they are the ‘seller’ and ‘buyer’ of their own product and
so can play prices however they like and not even the PUC can deny them
their right.
Look at it this way: Fortis via BEL decide what BECOL’s output cost
them and there is no way to dispute their figures. It is through this
monopolistic control that, while Lynn Young preaches poverty and the
need for rate rise, the profits of Fortis’s Belize operations continue
to rise and Belize, far from being a lame duck for Fortis, is their
proportionately highest earner.
Now Fortis say they must raise rates by 10% because of Chalillo! It is
past time that the PUC not only looked into the per kw energy charge
sold by BECOL to BEL but also went through Fortis’s own balance sheet
and annual returns. It's also essential that Fortis not be allowed
maintain their monopoly over pricing by pleading how much Chalillo cost
them - and insisting that this debt has to be repaid before any
competition is allowed into the electricity market.
The 10% increase which Fortis say they have to charge to recover their
investment (about fivefold) means that BEL/BECOL have already or are
now renegotiating the previously secret 3rd Master agreement with our
crooked government. I ask the BEL and the PUC, ‘Yes or No?’
And, I ask that the Belizean people also demand answers to these
questions. Not Fortis, BEL or the Government of Belize have the right to
continually ride roughshod over law, the constitution and all
decency. If they are unable to account truthfully then they must be held
to account by public demand.
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