Electricity seen as sleeping giant but still 13pc have no power

LESS than 13 per cent of Papua New Guineans have access to electricity, acting director for the regulations and licensing division at the Department of Petroleum and Energy Martin Bonou says.
Bonou told the 2017 PNG Electricity Industry Regulation Workshop in Port Moresby yesterday that the electricity industry was a sleeping giant.
“Our involvement in this industry is that we have the electricity industry policy that was passed in 2011 where the private sectors can come in to generate electricity and that’s where we are coming,” he said.
“But at the moment, what we are trying to do is that we are trying to roll out what we call the national electrification rollout plan.
“This plan will be completed by the end of this year and that’s the plan for the whole country.”
Bonou said the plan was expected to be rolled out from next year through a government funding support.
“But just in a nutshell of what is the situation in the country as provided to us by our consultant in developing this national electrification plan, we have only 13 per cent of people accessing electricity service in the country.
“The 13 per cent is the quote from PNG Power Limited (PPL) and out of that 13 per cent accounted on PPL account, we have 6 per cent not accounted but it’s in the system. So we need to get that 6 per cent on board to make it 12 per cent accessible by the people,” Bonou said.
Meanwhile the Independent Consumer and Competition Commission (ICCC) does not have the capacity to regulate the technical aspect of the electricity industry in PNG,  ICCC regulated industries division acting executive manager with Roy Daggy said.
He said the technical regulatory functions were still with PNG Power Ltd.