SUBSIDIES to Guyana Power & Light Inc. (GPL) that received the approval of the Parliamentary Opposition from 2009 to 2012 were used to prevent tariff increases during those years.

Consequently, Cabinet believes that the same “logic” would have been applicable in 2013.
“But history has, sadly, demonstrated otherwise,” Head of the Presidential Secretariat (HPS), Dr. Roger Luncheon lamented, yesterday.
Speaking during his usual post-Cabinet press conference in Office of the President (OP), Shiv Chanderpaul Drive, Georgetown, he said:“Sinister moves are now afoot. Contempt, political intrigue, were, obviously, overriding factors that governed the Opposition’s behaviour and choices in 2013, leading them to reduce the subsidies.
“Obviously, the Opposition felt that their continued support and acceptance of the subsidy tariff in Linden in 2013 would be overlooked when a reduction in GPL subsidy and an increase in tariff for the rest of Guyana would be caused by them.
“Politically, they must have reasoned that tariff increases would initiate the equivalent of an Arab Spring in Guyana,” Luncheon remarked.
He added: “Maybe now the Opposition can explain their decision, attempting to convince Guyanese why the logic of subsidies and tariff increases should not have continued to be supported by them, not only in Linden, but also for the rest of Guyana.”

PLANNED MEETING
Luncheon said Cabinet has noted, with apprehension, the abandonment by A Partnership for Unity (APNU) of the planned meeting with the management of GPL.
He recalled that the Government and APNU met last year at OP and hammered out an agreement that would have seen a reduction in the electricity subsidy provided to Linden and, consequently, a rise in the electricity tariff in Linden.
“The reference here is to the linkage, then and now, between subsidies and tariff in the power sector. Voices within the Opposition have been attempting to deny such linkages by trying to suggest that it was not their Budget cuts, of over $5 billion, in the 2013 Budget that, predictably, led to the 27 percent increase that GPL attempted to introduce,” Luncheon asserted.
Meanwhile, the next sitting of the National Assembly is scheduled for July 18 and Government is not convinced that there would be any difference in the proceedings, given the recent “behaviour” of the Opposition, he said.