Ceylon Electricity Board To Lose Rs40 bn This Year

• 13 years ago (2010-06-02)
• David Flin

North America 998

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Officials of Sri Lanka’s power utility, Ceylon Electricity Board say they expect to lose 40 billion rupees (US$350 million) in 2010. Short-term debt is mounting. CEB expects to earn 120 billion rupees as revenue this year but operational expenses would be 159 billion rupees.

Patali Ranawaka, Power Minister for Sri Lanka, said, “In the last 10 years CEB has lost 148 billion rupees and will continue to lose 391 billion rupees in the next 10 years.” CEB expects the demand to grow by 7-8 per cent. They estimate that power needs to grow by about 2 per cent above GDP, which is has been officially forecast at around 6.5 per cent.

Ranawaka said, “We are determined in five years to reduce debt, make CEB financially strong and profitable.”

CEB’s losses have come from: high cost liquid fuel generation, low tariffs compared to cost, system losses and stolen power. CEB has had system losses of about 15 per cent. In areas such as Eastern Province, losses can be as high as 29 per cent, largely due to the stealing of power.

CEB plans a new distribution expansion that will have insulated conductors instead of bare wires, which made it easy for people to steal power. Ranawaka said there were plans to introduce peak hour metering to encourage costumers to use power at off peak times