One positive aspect of the economic crisis that broke out last year (2022) is that it drew the people’s attention to a number of questionable matters that had created a breeding ground for the economic crisis to grow but had remained unchecked for decades. While inadequacies and irregularities in the country’s political culture and financial discipline are at the top of that list, more related issues are now being discussed and addressed. 

The power sector is one of the many sectors that are going through reforms. While how effective and genuine the ongoing reforms are, is yet to be seen, more issues in this sector have come to light during the past few months. Allegations of corruption and the lack of transparency in high-level appointments, emergency power purchases, and electricity pricing and tariff hikes, in the main institution in this sector, i.e. the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB), to name a few, are a big concern.

It is in such a context that the Electricity Consumers Association (ECA) urged the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) and the Auditor General’s Department to look into a multi-billion rupee matter. The ECA claimed that a sum of over Rs. 12 billion had been misused through the payment of that amount as capacity charges to the ACE Power Plant in Embilipitiya over the past 15 years, which it said allegedly amounts to several times the said power plant’s actual value. According to him, over Rs. 100 million is paid to the power plant per month and this payment is mandatory even if electricity was not purchased. 

Alarmingly, this practice had continued for over a decade despite its unfavourable nature, while the Cabinet of Ministers’ decisions to acquire the power plant, if implemented, would have ended this corruption. Therefore, the Government and the relevant authorities have an undeniable duty to entertain the demands for a probe into this matter. This probe should pay attention to, inter alia, who proposed and granted approval to the abovementioned exploitative condition to pay such an amount to the said power plant, why the CEB and successive power sector authorities did not notice or chose to ignore this enormous wastage of public funds, and why the relevant authorities, including the Auditor General’s Department, did not pay attention to the non-implementation of the said Cabinet decision.

The case of this power plant is but one incident that showcases the magnitude of corruption and/or the sheer imprudence in taking sound decisions that continues to cripple the economy despite the lesson the country should have learnt from the prevailing economic crisis. Therefore, the Government and the relevant authorities should not see this incident as the problem, as doing so would free them from their responsibilities concerning transparency and accountability once probes conclude, and instead, see this as a warning sign that the country’s power sector is in a dire need of reforms that go beyond what is being implemented now.

As transparency is what appears to be lacking in almost all aspects of the power plant’s case and even in the overall discourse on the CEB’s expenses and decisions, as part of these necessary long-term measures, the Government and the relevant authorities should pay attention to increasing the transparency in what they do. Who approves tenders, bids, and procurement-related proposals and their competitive nature, what technical criteria do they take into account when evaluating such, how impartial these decision makers are and how it is assessed, who scrutinises these decisions’ logical nature, and whether these decisions are in accordance with power sector-related national policies and the sector’s long-term objectives are only several aspects of this issue regarding which the Government and the relevant authorities should be more transparent. At the same time, those parties must adopt a higher level of transparency concerning their dealings with private service providers, especially those that sell electricity to the CEB.

Without such efforts, the ongoing reform processes will certainly fall short of the expectations and requirements. It is not difficult to understand that as long as there is room for corruption and ineptness in the power sector, no amount of electricity tariff hikes will be able to save it.