Maldives Energy Authority (MEA) in association with Public Enterprises Monitoring and Evaluation Board (PEMEB) today held a workshop to discuss the governance of power sector and compliance monitoring of power providers.

Minister Finance and Treasury Mr. Ahmed Inaz, addressing at the opening ceremony of this workshop held at Dharubaaruge today from 8:45 am to 12:30 pm, highlighted the issues concerning reporting of electricity service providers and highlighted the importance of regularly disclosing accurate data to relevant government authorities for their decision making. Clarifying the government’s subsidy policy, Minister emphasized that the subsidies given by the government is not for the purpose of assisting electricity service providers or utility companies. Rather, it is provided for the purpose of assisting the end users or consumers.

The main objective of MEA to organize this workshop is to obtain information concerning technical, financial, legal and management issues of the utility companies, and compile a report to the government on how the governance of power sector can be made more efficient. At the workshop, discussions were carried out on power generation costs of different regions of the Maldives; the obstacles faced by utility companies to provide electricity services most efficiently; electricity tariff issues; and the best possible ways to provide government subsidy to consumers and other grants to the utility companies.

During the workshop, Deputy Director of Maldives Energy Authority Mr. Ajwad Musthafa addressed the issues concerning managing statistics and reporting formats of the electricity service providers and introduced a standard reporting format that shall be followed by all electricity service providers when submitting data to the government institutions.

At the workshop, PEMEB revealed that the government, instead of providing finance for the operational costs of the government utility companies, in future will consider providing finance only to increase their capital.

The workshop was moderated by Chairman of PEMEB Mr. Mohamed Shihab. He concluded the discussions stressing the importance of holding further meetings to solve the issues discussed at today’s workshop.