The Tribune

By NATARIO MCKENZIE Tribune Business Reporter nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net THE Bahamas Electricity Corporation's (BEC) 2011 bottom line performance is expected to be closer to "break even" than original $5 million projections, due to Hurricane Irene, but will be in a much better position to meet the needs of its customers this year. Chairman Michael Moss yesterday told Tribune Business he expects the Corporation to have a more profitable year in 2012. "In terms of our ability to meet our customers' needs we expect a far better year than we had last year, and we expect that we will be commencing our maintenance schedule in a timely fashion, and not having to wait until early summer to get started because of financial constraints," Mr Moss said. "We are going to be much better prepared to meet the needs of our customers this summer in New Providence." Mr Moss said that he does not foresee any fuel charge increases at this time. He added, however: "One of the things utility companies worldwide are allowed to do is when they incur unusual costs, like hurricane restoration efforts, their regulators normally allow them to recover such costs through a special limited tariff adjustment. "I am not sure that will happen for BEC, but it is something we have not ruled out. Anything like that would be something small, and it would be something that would last over a relatively shot period of time and then disappear." In terms of profits, Mr Moss noted that in early 2011, he had projected profit in the area of $5 million. However, due to Hurricane Irene restoration efforts, BEC may be close to "breaking even" for 2011. "At the beginning of the year I had said I was thinking of something to the order of $5 million," Mr Moss said. "During the course of the year I had stated that the restoration works for the hurricane might have imposed an additional cost of about $5 million on us. That would bring us very close to a break even point. That is if my original projection held through, and the restoration effort came in around the number we thought it would." He added: "We expect profits to be better this year. I am hopeful we will not be challenged by any unforeseen issues." According to Mr Moss, BEC's 2011 financial statements are presently being audited. Mr Moss said: "Our figures are with the auditors, they are presently working on the numbers. I had a high level meeting with them a few weeks ago." Mr Moss also noted that the Corporation has completed its restoration works on all the Family Islands except Eleuthera. "We have completed our restoration work from the hurricane in all of the islands except Eleuthera, where even though we restored supplies to all consumers, certain parts of our system are still in a state we would deem to be vulnerable. Over the coming months we will be having a number of scheduled outages in Eleuthera in order to carry out what we call system reinforcements, that is, to improve the reliability of our distribution and transmission network," Mr Moss said.