Govt not ruling out T&TEC rate hike

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath yes­ter­day stopped short of as­sur­ing cit­i­zens that elec­tric­i­ty rates would not be in­creased to help set­tle the near­ly $10 bil­lion debt owed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) to the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC).

Pressed by the Op­po­si­tion dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee’s (SFC) ex­am­i­na­tion of the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties’ 2027 bud­getary al­lo­ca­tions, Padarath did not give a com­mit­ment that T&TEC cus­tomers would be spared fur­ther rate in­creas­es as the Gov­ern­ment seeks to ad­dress the mount­ing debt.

In­stead, he blamed the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion for al­low­ing the debt to ac­cu­mu­late, while re­veal­ing Gov­ern­ment had been ac­tive­ly en­gaged in ne­go­ti­a­tions with NGC to ad­dress the debt.

When asked by Op­po­si­tion MP Stu­art Young what the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to do to re­lieve T&TEC of the debt, Padarath said dis­cus­sions were un­der­way.

“There are some ne­go­ti­a­tions that we are ac­tive­ly dis­cussing with NGC, and there­fore more will be said at the ap­pro­pri­ate time. But I can give the as­sur­ance to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that it is some­thing on our radar. One of the very first things I spoke about on be­com­ing Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties was this ex­ist­ing debt be­tween NGC and T&TEC. In the very near fu­ture, a lot more will be said about it, but it is re­ceiv­ing our at­ten­tion,” Padarath said.

How­ev­er, the ex­change be­came heat­ed when Padarath asked Young why the PNM al­lowed the debt to “bal­loon to $9B” un­der its tenure.

In re­sponse, Young said, “You went to the pop­u­la­tion, you asked to be in charge. You’re in charge for 19 months now, deal with it.”

He then asked Padarath if he could as­sure cit­i­zens Gov­ern­ment will not raise elec­tric­i­ty rates to as­sist T&TEC to pay the NGC debt.

Padarath did not make that promise.

In­stead, Padarath said, “What I can as­sure the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go is that we are com­mit­ted to deal­ing with this chal­lenge of nine, go­ing on $10 bil­lion left in lega­cy debts by the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion… They cre­at­ed this sit­u­a­tion be­tween NGC and T&TEC that we are now be­ing forced to clean up.”

But hit­ting back, for­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said the PNM had de­vel­oped a roadmap to ad­dress the out­stand­ing debt.

How­ev­er, Padarath in­sist­ed that rec­om­men­da­tions con­tained in the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) re­port un­der the PNM would have seen elec­tric­i­ty rates in­crease by as much as 81 per cent in some in­stances, plac­ing a greater fi­nan­cial bur­den on cus­tomers.

Padarath said, “When the mem­ber speaks about a plan to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion be­tween NGC and T&TEC, their plan was to bur­den the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go by high­er elec­tric­i­ty rates.”

Gon­za­les re­ject­ed the claim, in­sist­ing the PNM had no in­ten­tion of im­ple­ment­ing those in­creas­es.

Back in 2023, while the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress was in Op­po­si­tion, Padarath filed a mo­tion to stop the RIC’s planned rate hike.

Then, last Au­gust, af­ter the UNC took of­fice, Padarath in­di­cat­ed that they had re­ject­ed the RIC’s pro­pos­als, not­ing it was an elec­tion promise not to pur­sue the rec­om­men­da­tion.

Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day reached out to the RIC for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the is­sue but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time.

The Op­po­si­tion al­so ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of break­ing its com­mit­ment not to in­crease elec­tric­i­ty charges, point­ing to in­creas­es an­nounced in its bud­gets.

How­ev­er, Padarath de­fend­ed Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach, ar­gu­ing that its elec­tric­i­ty sur­charge had been struc­tured to pro­tect the ma­jor­i­ty of con­sumers while re­quir­ing those us­ing larg­er quan­ti­ties of elec­tric­i­ty to con­tribute more.

He said the sur­charge ap­plied to few­er than ten per cent of cus­tomers whose elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion reached 3,000 kilo­watt-hours or more, while ap­prox­i­mate­ly 90 per cent of con­sumers fell be­low that thresh­old.

Padarath added, “What we have sought to do, un­like col­leagues op­po­site who ad­vo­cat­ed for the rich to get rich­er off the backs of the poor, the Prime Min­is­ter has said that there must be a bal­anc­ing. There must be a re­dis­tri­b­u­tion of who will car­ry that bur­den.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so sought com­ment from NGC but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time.

Padarath al­so yes­ter­day dis­closed that Gov­ern­ment would have to ex­am­ine whether T&TEC’s elec­tric­i­ty re­bate pro­gramme was pro­vid­ing val­ue for mon­ey.

How­ev­er, he stressed that Gov­ern­ment had not tak­en a de­ci­sion to dis­con­tin­ue the ini­tia­tive.

T&TEC’s re­bate pro­gramme of­fers a 35 per cent re­bate to res­i­den­tial cus­tomers on bills $300 or less. The re­bate is au­to­mat­i­cal­ly ap­plied to qual­i­fy­ing ac­counts on each billing cy­cle and is not trans­fer­able or used to liq­ui­date ar­rears.

Padarath ex­plained that the pro­gramme was in­tend­ed to en­cour­age low­er elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion while pro­vid­ing re­lief to vul­ner­a­ble house­holds, adding that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 170 cus­tomers ben­e­fit from the pro­gramme year­ly.

When Gon­za­les asked if the Gov­ern­ment would be re­view­ing the fea­si­bil­i­ty of con­tin­u­ing the pro­gramme, Padarath said, “It is a bal­anc­ing act in terms of pro­vid­ing for the most vul­ner­a­ble in our so­ci­ety but al­so un­der­stand­ing the maths. If there are 170 per­sons ben­e­fit­ing from this with an ex­pen­di­ture of over $60 mil­lion, ob­vi­ous­ly, it tells you there is a need for re­view. I am not say­ing that we are elim­i­nat­ing it. That is not the gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy at this time, but ob­vi­ous­ly, there must be an el­e­ment of re­view in terms of val­ue for mon­ey and this type of ex­pen­di­ture.”

Dur­ing the SFC, Gon­za­les al­so ques­tioned why the pro­vi­sion had fall­en from $87.6M to $60M.

Ex­plain­ing the de­crease, Padarath re­vealed that pay­ments amount­ed to ap­prox­i­mate­ly $33.769M be­tween April and Sep­tem­ber 2025, while a fur­ther $50.68M was paid for the nine-month pe­ri­od from Oc­to­ber 2025 to June 2026.

He said month­ly ex­pen­di­ture ranged be­tween $4.7M and $6.6M, with an av­er­age of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $5M.

At that rate, he ad­mit­ted the $60M al­lo­ca­tion might not be suf­fi­cient to cov­er the pro­gramme for the en­tire fis­cal year, and as such the Min­istry of Fi­nance might have to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al fund­ing at the mid-year re­view.