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| Sunday, 3 July 2005 |
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CEB will not be privatised - Susil Premajayanth by Shanika Sriyananda Power and Energy Minister Susil Premajayanth reiterated that the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) would not be privatised under the UPFA Government but it certainly would introduce reforms to increase CEB's generation capacity and to re-structure debts and tariff structure. Launching the 'Sustainable Guarantee Facility' initiated by the Energy Conservation Fund, he said the CEB is continuously incurring losses due to low selling price and heavy dependence on thermal power generation. He stressed that under the final outcome of the Expert Committee, the CEB will be given a new look without privatising and even without changing the name CEB. According to Minister Premajayanth, the CEB, which generates power at an average cost of Rs. 11 sells at Rs. 7.70 to customers, thereby incurring a loss of over Rs. 50 m daily and from year 2000 upto now the loss to the CEB is over Rs. 30 b. "Sri Lanka would be the only country in the world which depends on over 65 percent on auto diesel to generate electricity", he said. Minister also said that the two most delayed power projects - the Upper Kotmale and Norochcholai Coal Power - would be completed within the next four to six years. "A Chinese technical team will come to Sri Lanka next month to carry out a study about the Coal Power Project and the first phase would commence by the end of this year", he assured. According to Minister Premajayanth, a unit cost of hydro electricity is Rs. 2.90 and only 35 per cent of country's electricity generation comes from hydro. The unit price of emergency power purchases is between Rs. 18 and Rs. 20. |
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