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| St. Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister, Dr. the Hon. Denzil L. Douglas (r) and Press Secretary Mr. Erasmus Williams at Tuesday's Press Conference |
BASSETERRE, ST. KITTS, OCTOBER 12TH 2005 St. Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Dr. the Hon. Denzil L. Douglas warned residents Tuesday that with spiraling fuel prices worldwide, the Government was been forced to cease the present policy of subsidising electricity in St. Kitts and Nevis, already the cheapest in the Caribbean.
Prime Minister Douglas also said that Government will vigorously pursue efforts to identify alternative sources of energy and will soon unveil a package of incentives to encourage citizens to conserve energy.
We spend close to EC$15 million annually on diesel and other associated products. Already six months into this year, we had already spent that amount and just this morning, I sat with the Acting Financial Secretary and signed a Supplementary Appropriation Warrant that will provide an additional EC$10 million in order to purchase petroleum products to operate the Needsmust Power Plant to generate electricity for our consumers, the Prime Minister told a Press Conference.
Let me use the opportunity to emphasise that the Government cannot continue to subsidise fuel, said Dr. Douglas, who said he was advised last week by the Ministry of Finance that for every gallon of petrol that is sold at the pump, the Government is subsidising by as much as EC$6.00.
That has to come to an end. This will ruin the economy of the country and very shortly we will have to make the necessary adjustment to the prices so that this is not borne by the Government but by the consumers, said Prime Minister Douglas, who is also Minister of Finance.
He said it was the same with regard to electricity. To date the energy charge for electricity is not passed on to the consumer. I have statistics here which tells me that Government at the moment is selling its electricity at 35 cents per kilo watt hour, but the cost of diesel which we have to use to generate electricity is being purchased at 45 cents for every kilowatt hour. It is the lowest in the whole Caribbean region, Dr. Douglas said.
We are not even charging our consumers the actual cost to Government to purchase diesel alone to run the generators. This cost does not include the maintenance cost of the generators and it also does not include the capital recovery cost, the basic infrastructure such as buildings, its maintenance and supplies, said Prime Minister Douglas, who reiterated: This has to be re-examined and I have asked the Ministry of Finance to prepare the necessary submission to be brought to the Cabinet so that we can have a second look at this very precarious situation that we find ourselves in.
While residents in St. Kitts and Nevis pay EC$8.30 per imperial gallon for gasoline, in Grenada it is EC$10.89 and in Antigua it is EC$11.89.
In St. Kitts and Nevis a 20 lbs tank of cooking gas costs EC$30.00 and a 100 lbs cylinder, EC$140.00. In Grenada, the 20 lbs tank costs EC$40.05 and the 100 lbs cylinder is sold at EC$197.77 and in Carriacou, EC$44.55 and EC$212.27 respectively.
Prime Minister Douglas said it was important for Government to implement and utilise the Petro Caribe Initiative that is been pursued in collaboration with the Government of Venezuela.
With the spiraling cost of fuel the Government it has become very important for me to emphasise that my Government is pursuing in a very active way a number of initiatives with regard to alternative fuel sources, said Prime Minister Douglas.
There is wind energy. We have a number of proposals where energy can be generated from windmills just as they were in the early days when we operated our sugar factory, said Dr. Douglas, who said his St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party Administration was also looking at hydro thermal energy.
We are looking at energy from the sugar cane plant ethanol, and other by products or primary products that can be utilised as a source and a form of energy, said Dr. Douglas, who disclosed that technical teams from Cuba, Brazil and Venezuela have agreed to look at the potential use of the sugar cane plant to produce ethanol.
Dr. Douglas said during the Small Island Developing States meeting held here last week, a proposal was received from one of the presenters and which is supported at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) for an initial feasibility studies to determine whether we can tap the seawater or the ocean as a source of potential energy for generation that can be utilised in helping us to reduce our dependence on oil.
When I go to Japan next week, I have made a request to visit such a plant that I have seen as a model when I visited Mauritius last January to look at the environmental development programme as an inititive for Small Island Developing States and hopefully we would be able to see that plant and to what extent St. Kitts and Nevis can benefit from those projects that are taking place from researches with regard to alternative energy, said the Prime Minister.
He called on consumers to practice energy conservation and said that by the end of the year, Government will unveil a package of incentives that will encourage citizens to conserve energy.
Whether it is the conservation of energy in your homes or whether it is in other initiatives. For example, the type of vehicles that we use, the type of engines that we will encourage to be imported in the Federation. We want to begin to sensitize the community on these issues and to hear from our residents and citizens their own views and ideas as to how we can conserve energy and how we can provide incentives for our citizens for the conservation of energy, Prime Minister Douglas told the news conference which was carried live on several radio stations.
