Forty percent of the customers who previously paid their bills on time have lost the ability to pay because of the recent increases in the electricity tariffs, and are now two and three months behind in their payments. Hoy newspaper?s Fior Gil reports that this reality produces a deficit of US$30 million among the distributors and the generators, according to Superintendent of Electricity George Reinoso, and making the situation that much worse. It also makes investment in the sector more difficult to stimulate. According to Reinoso, the electricity sector should produce US$90 million a month, but the monthly deficit is now somewhere between US$25 and US$37 million. The money that is received is barely enough to purchase fuel, and, therefore, investments destined to better the service have been put on hold. The superintendent said that until the collection levels begin to improve, there will be very little investment, and he expressed his hope that in the short term more buying power would be restored to the people ? a situation, according to Reinoso, that will require both government and private sector employers to devise a solution. The government continues to provide a RD$600-million subsidy for the poorest neighborhoods and reportedly last week they paid out US$15 million to the generators, to assuage the severity of the blackouts. The Mejia government in October 2003 bought back from the Spanish company Union Fenosa the Ede-Norte and Ede-Sur power distributors, and thus is directly responsible for the low level of collections for two thirds of the nationwide electricity customer base.