Press Release UNKOBON
As of 1 January 2018, WEB will increase the rates for electricity by as much as 24%. Temporary - for three months – after that there will be a new pricing system whose consequences for Bonaire are still unclear.
The new pricing system is a consequence of the BES Electricity and Drinking Water Act that came into force in 2016. According to this law not only WEB and the Executive Council, but also the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM), the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management have a say in determining the tariffs. The introduction of the new system with regard to consumer tariffs would take place on 1 January 2017, but was postponed for the third time in mid-December 2017. This time till April 1st, 2018.
The temporary tariff increase now announced, is a consequence of a considerable increase in the production tariffs that Contour Global may charge as off 1 January 2018 and the production price of the electricity produced by WEB itself.
In 2017 there were already higher costs that justified a rate increase, but in spite of this the tariffs charged by WEB to its customers ($ 0.205 for production and $ 0.104 for network) remained unchanged this year.
For Unkobon it is incomprehensible that the authorities involved have not been able to adjust the tariff earlier. If the increase had been made in time in 2017, as with Saba and Statia in which promised subsidies from the Netherlands were included, the enormous shock of this temporary increase on 1 January 2018 could have been avoided for many consumers.
More information about production rates at FB.com/Unkobon