The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) has announced a 30% and 14% upward adjustment in electricity and water tariffs respectively for the third quarter of this year. But this adjustment will not be implemented. The commission indicates it will rather implement the second quarter price tariff adjustment of 12.09% for electricity and 6.1% for water which was deferred. With this latest announcement, tariffs would have averagely gone up by about 72.5% since October 2013
In January 2014, the PURC started adjusting the prices of utilities through the Automatic Adjustment Formula.
The PURC has noted that the increase for the third quarter is driven by the key variables that underpin the Automatic Adjustment Formula and these are:
- Ghana Cedi USD Exchange Rate
- Inflation
- Price of Crude Oil and Natural Gas
- Fuel Mix (Light Crude Oil and Natural Gas and Distillate Fuel)
- Generation Mix (Hydro and Thermal)
- Power Purchase Cost
- Demand Forecast(Currently 12% per annum and still Rising)
- Chemical Cost (Water)
- Electricity Cost (Water)
Citi Business News Desk provides below a diagrammatic presentation of the changes in the tariffs since October 2013.