The imminent start up of the DR-CAFTA free trade agreement within the next four months has renewed a long time demand from many industries: Their right to buy energy directly from the generators, as stipulated by Law 125-01. As reported in El Caribe, this law grants customers who consume 2 megawatts the right to become “non-regulated” and purchase their energy needs directly from the generators, and not from the distributors like Ede-Sur and Ede-Norte. With this “disconnect” from the distributors, industries can receive huge savings on what, according to El Caribe, is one of the weakest links in the Dominican industrial scene’s competitiveness. Because of the financial impact such a stampede of lucrative clients would have on the various distributors, so far, the applicable clause is a “dead letter.” However, with the ‘zero hour’ of the free trade agreement approaching, there has been a renewal of the lobbying needed to get things rolling, and, indeed, some sources are talking about a legal offensive that will enable the industries access to the direct purchase of energy. A former president of the CONEP business association, Celso Marranzini, was quoted as saying that “more than ‘regulated clients’ the industrialists are clay pigeons for the distributors to shoot at.” Without going through the distributors, industrialists would pay just US$0.09 per kilowatt hour, instead of the US$0.23.they are currently paying the distributors. With the dawn of the FTA with the United States the industrialists are under even more pressure to be competitive. As Marranzini said, “the industrial sector is the principal generator of jobs, but it cannot compete with Central America where electricity is just 10? a kilowatt-hour.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The imminent start up of the DR-CAFTA free trade agreement within the next four months has renewed a long time demand from many industries: Their right to buy energy directly from the generators, as stipulated by Law 125-01. As reported in El Caribe, this law grants customers who consume 2 megawatts the right to become … <\/p>\n