With the electric system is at an all-time low, Superintendent of Electricity George Reinoso told reporters: ?We don?t know who is going to put the bell on the cat.? In other words, who is going to fix the situation? Meanwhile, the superintendent?s office is demanding that the shareholders of Itabo (AES, El Paso Energy, and the Dominican State) give a public explanation as to why Itabo I and II, after undergoing a US$100-million maintenance program, have still not reached the levels of production and stability that were expected. Officials from the superintendent?s office denounced the fact that Itabo?s authorities keep making promises, but the plants remain offline. Reinoso met with reporters ?to clear up a few things? and said that the problem with the electric service is the distributors? lack of cash flow, which, over the past 18 months has gone from US$27 million per month to US$10 million. Added to this fact is the stoppage of disbursements from international organizations like the World Bank and the IDB due to the break down in the IMF Standby agreement. Reinoso pointed out that these realities, along with ten-year highs in oil prices and in a country where the energy is 90% dependant on oil, have taken the sector to a near collapse. Even in this dismal situation, the theft of electricity is a serious problem, with the distributors losing as much as 20% of their supply to illegal connections. Reinoso revealed, in plain language, that the government had planned to spend RD$12 billion of electricity subsidies, of which, RD$7.2 billion was carried in the budget for 2004. The rest of the money was to have come from international financial deals, but these were discontinued when the IMF halted the Standby Agreement. The total debt of the energy sector was said to be US$320 million.