Blackouts affect competitiveness

[NewsWhore]

The recent wave of rolling blackouts makes life difficult for citizens, but also places an additional burden on small and medium sized businesses, which are already struggling with high fuel and production costs. In some cases blackouts have caused business overheads to double because they need to buy more fuel to keep their generators going. In Haina businesses are complaining of blackouts of up to 14 hours, mostly during the morning and afternoons, when they are open. Bakers are also feeling the pinch, saying that they have to spend an average of RD$2,000 per day to fuel their generators. According to State-run Electricity Companies vice president Radhames Segura, the energy grid should be back on track this week. Segura said that yesterday the energy deficit was only 35% and but gave no word on when AES, which supplies 20% of national demand, would be back on the grid. But this contradicts reports by Listin Diario saying that only 1,092MW of energy were produced for a deficit of 902MW. According to Listin, AES is only producing 20MW of energy from a total capacity of 300MW. The distributors claim that deficiencies in the system are the result of the government's lack of payment. Segura said that before the end of the month the CDEEE would pay RD$64 million towards a debt of more than US$300 million, but now the Hacienda Ministry says it can only provide US$10 million. El Caribe reports that failure to pay less than 20% of the amount promised means that the blackouts will continue indefinitely.
In related news, the president of the National Association of Young Entrepreneurs (ANJE) Pablo Piantini Hazoury has voiced concerns about the gradual deterioration of the electricity sector, to the point where floating generators have to be rented. He added that if the problem is the payment of debt the solution is not to rent out floating generators, but to pay off the remaining debt.

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