The Corporación Dominicana de Electricidad (CDE) is reported to owe the Smith-Enron company, which disconnected its power station in Puerto Plata from the state-owned electricity corporation’s distribution network on 30 March, approximately US$4,500,000. Representatives of Smith-Enron claim that their stock of fuel and other items needed to keep the power station operating have run out, and have said that it is unlikely that they will reconnect to the CDE’s network until payment is made. The general administrator of the CDE, Amilcar Romero, has told the news media that the situation can be solved only by President Joaquín Balaguer, from whom Mr. Romero claims the money for the payment must come.
The CDE currently owes just over RD$750 million to private electricity suppliers, and it is feared that the other five private companies on contract to the CDE could follow the example of Smith-Enron.
With the absence of the contribution of 185,000 kilowatts per day from the Smith-Enron power station, the first week of April saw a total daily deficit of approximately 550 megawatts. The CDE improved its service substantially at the beginning of 1996 after a difficult 1995, yet according to a detailed article in the Listin Diario at the beginning of March, much of that improvement was due to the electricity provided by private suppliers which, in turn, generated higher monthly costs for the CDE, leading to the current debt.
The current electricity “crisis”, as it is called in most major newspapers, has again prompted politicians, experts in the field of electricity production and some members of government to call for the passage of the General Electricity Bill, which has been in Congress for almost two years without advancing in the Senate. The bill outlines the steps to be taken to put electricity production in the hands of the private sector, something which has been suggested for years as part of the solution to the electricity problem in the D.R.
12-18 April 1996