Editorial : The government should not subsidise electricity tariff increases
文章日期:2018年7月6日

【明報專訊】THE new Scheme of Control Agreement (SCA) for CLP Power and Hong Kong Electric will come into effect soon. Even though the permitted rate of return will be reduced, the tariffs will rise instead of falling. Over the next 5 years, the accumulated rise will be as high as 20% to 35%. This shows that the government has been slack in gatekeeping, allowing the two power companies to increase tariffs substantially and take as much as they want from the citizens in the name of "replacing power generating units to promote emission reduction". The two companies have been allowed to significantly increase their capital expenditure on a scale that far exceeds the market's expectation. The government has not provided any detailed explanations. Instead, it has proposed to allocate $8.7 billion for "helping" citizens to deal with tariff increases. The government claims that it is a subsidy for citizens, but it is in fact using public money to subsidise the two companies.

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