'Be more transparent on electricity tariff cost'

The Association of Water and Energy Research Malaysia (AWER) has called for the government to reveal the cost structure of electricity tariff, namely generation cost, transmission cost and distribution cost.

“Based on the cost structure of electricity tariff, increase in fuel cost will give the biggest impact to tariff. Unfortunately, generation cost is neither regulated nor made to be efficient by MyPower Corporation and Energy Commission (ST) and the government.

“Why is this important? People need to know what they’re paying for. Businesses need to plan for the future,” said AWER President Piarapakaran Subramaniam during an interview with Astro AWANI.

He also added that the government needed to to provide the specifics on what they plan to do with the RM4 billion in subsidies saved as a result of the hike in electricity tariff.

“Whever they talk about subsidy, they will say ‘We are going to channel for this, we are going to channel for that.’ Can they be more specific,” asked Piarapakaran.

Piarapakaran that there will be negative repercussions for the electricity and manufactuing sectors.

“Business and industies still have to bear the cost. What will they do? They pass the costs to their products and services. For industries that are exporting products, they will move out from Malaysia,” he added.

When asked about renewable energy, he said the country is still not the technology owner.

“Most of the things we are trying to do, we are not the technology owner. So when you’re not the technology owner, we are working with foreign technologies. You are actually buying end products,” he said.