The director of the Energy Institute at the UASD university warned that unless the contracts for buying and selling energy are revised and renegotiated, all the money invested in the sector will go down the drain and the blackouts will continue. Jose Luis Moreno said that government intervention in the electrical distribution in the east (EDE-Este) was necessary as the company was bankrupt. His recommendation was that once the government took over, it should be managed under a joint administration along with Ede Norte and Ede Sur. Moreno told reporters from Hoy newspaper that the General Law of Electricity gave the Superintendent the authority to intervene in a bankrupt company, such as Ede Este, and name an administrator. The institute head also said that the government should declare a state of emergency regarding the electric sector. He pointed out that while the rest of the world pays five and six cents per kilowatt-hour, in the Dominican Republic the cost begins at nearly twice that rate. He argued that electricity here should be priced at six or seven cents a kilowatt-hour.
When asked about the payments the government has made to the generators, he said that all money injected to the electric sector was money wasted. He pointed out that one of the worst problems suffered by the system are the non-technical losses, a euphemism for electricity theft. At the same time, Moreno argued for improved collections by the various distribution companies, not through higher rates but through better management techniques.