The Hon. (Dr.) Harsha de Silva

¶ 01 Hon. Deputy Chairperson, I will quote verbatim what our colleague alluded to—from the IMF’s Resident Representative at yesterday’s press conference (available to download):

¶ 02 “Responding to a query on whether recent losses from coal shipments contributed to the financial strain of the Ceylon Electricity Board, he acknowledged that they had.

¶ 03 ‘It is true that these imports had some negative impact on the profits of the Electricity Board, and were therefore one contributing factor to the increase in electricity tariffs,’ he said.”

¶ 04 In Sinhala: Has substandard coal increased electricity tariffs? The IMF says: yes, it added to CEB losses and contributed to tariff increases. I table both the NSO annex cited by Hon. D.V. Chanaka and the IMF document.

¶ 05 Further, the IMF Staff-Level Agreement conditions disbursement (USD 700 million) on cost-recovery, cost-reflective tariffs. If there is a loss at CEB, tariffs must be raised to recover that loss. That is explicit; I table the document.

¶ 06 On the NSO publication of 08th: expected coal-based generation for Apr–Jun is revised down from 1,381 GWh to 1,131.59 GWh—a shortfall of 250 GWh (250 million units). Diesel costs ~Rs. 95–100 per unit versus coal ~Rs. 20; difference ~Rs. 75, implying about Rs. 19 billion incremental cost. The NSO seeks Rs. 33 billion in tariff increases (25% with Naphtha, ~30% without). If Naphtha is available, overall increase sought is Rs. 33 billion; of that, about Rs. 19 billion—57%—is attributable to substandard coal. These are not my words; they are in the documents I have tabled.

¶ 07 If this is untrue, please present your counter-data.

¶ 08 Thank you.