The executive vice president of the Dominican Association of the Electrical Industry (BYE), Manuel Cabralsaid yesterday that the entity estimates that the subsidy to distributors this year would amount to between 1,500 and 1,600 million dollars.
“Unfortunately we continue with a very high subsidy that the government has to send to distribution companies because they are not financially sustainable. This year we are talking that we are going to close, according to the projections we have, with about 1,500 or 1,600 million dollars,” said Cabral.
He pointed out that the distribution companies have to adapt, reduce their losses and have to become financially sustainable companies.
“We have seen a government plan, which is very positive and addresses a lot of the distortions of these companies, but the reality is that they have to move faster because as a country, dedicating that amount of money instead of allocating it to education, to infrastructure and health, neuralgic issues, it is unfortunate”, said the executive of the BYE.
He added that the challenge of the sector has always been the same: the lack of sustainability of distributors.
“We have seen how the generation sector has diversified appropriately, transmission itself is growing; we have seen an institutional strengthening with the departure of the CDEEE (Dominican Corporation of State Electric Companies), and passing all the energy sector policy to the Ministry of Energy and Mines The plan they have is a good plan, to make the distributors sustainable, but we need them to speed up.”
He assures that, if progress is made as a country on the issue of distributors, the Dominican Republic will be able to count on a robust, good and comprehensive electrical system.
“The losses (of the distributors) are close to 30 percent on average. There is a distributor, like Edenorte, that has lowered losses, but Edeeste still exceeds 40 percent,” he said.
Industry Planning
The approach was made by Manuel Cabral in the framework of a discussion organized by the BYE under the theme “Planning electric sector: key to success”.
For the BYEaccording to a distributed document, the planning of the electric sector it is a necessary process to consolidate the industry after the improvement initiatives promoted by the government and the investments made by the private sector in new generation that diversifies the matrix.
“The investments are significant and the projects take years to execute, so having a guide known to all is essential to strengthen the sector”, declared Cabral.
He stressed that this planning process must be carried out based on the National Energy Plan that was prepared by the National Energy Commission, and that it represents a giant step to coordinate the actions of the agents, so that the demand of the national market is kept covered. and improvisation due to lack of foresight is avoided.
