Ronald Alli is new chairman of GPL board
Stabroek News
April 11, 2003
Chartered accountant Ronald Alli has been named the new chairman of the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) board but the names of the two private sector representatives for the board are still to be confirmed.
Private Sector Commission (PSC) chairman, Peter DeGroot, has declined the nomination by the government because of his pressing schedule. Instead, the PSC is nominating Lloyd Piggott, Michael Cummings or David Spence to the position.
However, the government had already approached Piggott, who oversees Banks DIH's generation system. Piggott could not be reached up to press time to determine whether he has accepted the government's offer to sit on the power company's board.
The government is moving to appoint a four-man board to take GPL through its current phase of transition from privatisation to full state-ownership and possibly privatisation again. It has already appointed Alli and head of the Privatisation Unit, Winston Brassington, to the board and is awaiting word from private sector nominees to constitute the full board.
The board is to be in place before the end of next week to oversee the management transition from ESBI international to a core of four local managers.
The government and AC Power have agreed to terminate the privatisation agreement for the power company after the two sides failed to agree on terms to indemnify the latter from lawsuits or challenges to increased tariffs. The termination took place after eight months of negotiations.
A number of agreements were terminated on April 8 and the other agreements are to be terminated by the end of this month when the management team leaves. However, two members of the management team are expected to be retained by the government to bolster the interim management team.
Meanwhile, GPL is to file its final return certificate with the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) by the end of this month for final rate increases for this year. The final return certificate shows a requirement for a 14% rate increase instead of 13% and 16% filed in the interim certificate in late January but which were not implemented.
The government is still to make a pronouncement on what level of increases it would be pursuing as it seeks to restructure the power company, which has been unable to purchase adequate fuel in the last few months. However, there will be cost savings on the management contract of US$2.1M this year. On the other hand, there would be a requirement for sums to conduct much needed maintenance on the generation and transmission systems which have been overdue for some months.
It is very likely that the government would be pressed to go ahead and recover the full 14% of the rate increases in face of this, in the long-term interest of the company.
