In another article in El Caribe, Elena Brineman, the head of the USAID office, said that everyone should pay for electricity. At the same time, she advocated a study to determine the real costs of electricity in order to obtain transparency in the market. Commenting on how 40% of the electricity is not paid for, her recommendations included an increase in investment, a reduction in the technical losses and thievery, the identification of real costs, payment by everyone for all power consumed and everyone’s equal access to electricity. According to the economic editor of Hoy, Mario Mendez, the increase in electricity rates will lower the amount of money collected. At least, this is the opinion of Luis Moreno, the head of the Energy Institute at the UASD. Moreno says that it would be best to review the entire system of values that were agreed to in the Madrid Accords to see whether they are sustainable in the current situation. Moreno was clear in saying that if the distributors really cannot pay the generators, then the government should look at some sort of compensatory funding, because the consumer does not have to pay an excessive electricity rate just because there are problems with the distributors’ collections. In the economic section of the Listin Diario, the electricity generators are asking for a weekly payment. Facing a US$200-million debt owed to them by the electricity distributors, the generators have asked Finance Minister Rafael Calderon to reopen talks with the Official Commission for Sustaining the Electrical Sector, in order to provide a schedule for weekly payments so that they can continue operating. The last payments were made to the generators in November. As a result, blackouts have returned to plague the entire country, where certain sectors must tolerate 12-hour periods without electricity.