PUCSL has received no request for power tariff increase – Ratnayake

By Rathindra Kuruwita

The Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) had not submitted any request for a fresh increase in electricity tariff up to yesterday, Chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL), Janaka Ratnayake, said yesterday.

Commenting on claims made by the Minister of Power Kanchana Wijesekera, and the CEB senior management that electricty prices would increase by 65 percent in January, Ratnayake said that the PUCSL could not take any decision as there had not been a proposal to increase tariffs.

“There is way of revising the tariff. The CEB has to present a proposal and then we decide whether to approve it.

There is no point in placing a proposal to increase tariffs before the Cabinet. Probably, the Minister is trying to scare the people,” Ratnayake said, adding that the Minister and the CEB could not ask for a tariff hike based on possibility of power cuts.

“The President has not asked me to come see him, but I am waiting until I get the opportunity to explain what is going on,” he said.

Speaking in Parliament recently, President Ranil Wickremesinghe said powers to change the electricity tariff in Sri Lanka was vested with the Minister of Power and not the PUCSL.

“The PUCSL chairman says that he does not allow increasing the electricity tariffs. He has not been vested with any power in that connection. How could the country run the economy if we can’t increase the electricity tariff’, the President said, referring to Ratnayake’s objections to increasing tariffs.