Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera said the Draft Electricity Bill (DEB) aimed at unraveling the services of the Ceylon Electricity Board, and improving its efficiency, will be presented to the Cabinet in two weeks.
The Minister said that the DEB was earlier gazetted. However, several amendments have been made to the DEB, after some inconsistencies were found in it.
The Minister added that they has managed to get the DEB across the Attorney General’s (AG) Department. “We have just received AG’s observations on the DEB and hope to get Cabinet approval in two weeks”, Wijesekera said.
Minister Wijesekera was speaking during a panel discussion on Energising India-Sri Lanka Ties Through Cooperation in Renewable Energy, organised by the Indian High Commission in Colombo, on Monday (11) evening.
Indian High Commissioner Santosh Jha, New and Renewable Energy Ministry Secretary of India Shri Bhupinder Singh Bhalla, and Sustainable Energy Ministry Secretary Sulakshana Jayawardena were present. Former BOI Chairman Thilan Wijesinghe was the moderator.
The Minister added that government encourages more private sector participation in the Generation, Transmission and Distribution of Electricity in the country in future. However, the Minister said that it would take three-and-half years for the full implementation of Power sector reforms. “The entire transition from the time of its approval from Parliament will take 3 1 years”, he said.
Electricity sector is entirely monopolized by the government, even though some private parties are involved in the Generation sector.
Wijesekera is of the view that many things need to be done in the area of Asset allocation, Human Resources Management, before reforms are implemented. “There are many technical requirements that should be fulfilled before the implementation of reforms”, he added.
Minister Wijesekera explained how the government has already started the process with the support of development partners such as JICA, ADB, WB and USAID.
“We have already started a Reforms Secretariat and lot of work is being done even before it is approved by Parliament. In that sense, we have managed to reduce the timeline,” he said. Commenting on the cumbersome process related to the project approval process in Sri Lanka, the Minister said that the government has structured a framework to ensure a simplified approval process, on the advice of the President and the Cabinet.
Wijesekera mentioned that a structured framework will be established to simplify the approval process for investment, once the Debt Restructuring programme with IMF is finalised.
The Minister said the country faced the challenge of remunerating its developers and suppliers for three years, in a timely manner. “One reason for that is the Electricity industry was heavily subsidised”, he said .
The Minister said that the Power sector reforms are also aimed at making it more Cost Reflective. “Pricing is not the aim of the reforms but, we have to make sure that we have financial stability to pay back our developers and suppliers,” he said.
He added that the approval process exhibits a monopolistic nature and similarly, there are monopolies among developers in the realm of development.
“The bidding process is occasionally designed to favour a select few developers”, he said.
The Minister said even the Technical Evaluation Committees and other project committees have been structured in a way that no other investors could participate in it.
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