CDEEE reports on companies that are out of reach of tenders

SANTO DOMINGO. The executive Vice President of the Dominican Corporation of State - owned Electricity Enterprises (CDEEE) reported yesterday that the contracts of the Compañia de Electrividad de San Pedro de Macoris. S. A. (CESPM), Dominican Power Partners, LDC. (DPP) and the companies registered in the Special Regime of Energy Production covered by Law 57 - 07, are still outside of the tender process of the generators that the CDEEE had announced this year.

Likewise, the CDEEE reported that in the interest of guaranteeing the objectives of the tender they referred to, all long-term contract for supplying electricity and power which they intend signing with the distributors or with the CDEEE, should be the result of the already indicated competitive process of selection, according to the provisions of the regulations.

In this sense, he explained that for such a process there exist the unique exceptions that are enumerated as follows: (i) the Independent Producers of Electricity (IPP) that maintain contracts for buying and selling energy in force with the old Dominican Electricity Corporation, the judicial predecessor of this CDEEE, according to what is covered by article 138 of Law Num. 125 - 01.

Also (ii) the contracts of buying and selling energy or their eventual amendments which are signed with electricity producers using renewable sources, based on paragraph 1 of article 65 of decree Num. 202 - 08, dated 27 May 2008 which instructs the regulation of application of Law Num. 57 - 07 of 7 May 2007, regarding incentives and the development of renewable energy sources and their special regimes. Equally, (iii) the producers of electricity with contracts for supplying energy which as of this date are in this stage of initiating execution and development of the work, having to be accredited to that affect, the total certification of the required financing, as well as all the authorizations and permits as established by Law Num. 125 - 01 and its complementary regulations, especially, the definitive concession to exploit the activity of electricity generation in the Dominican Republic, issued by the institutions of the electricity subsector.

The reaction of the Adie

in relation to the issue, the Executive Vice President of the Dominican Association of the Electricity Industry (ADIE), Milton Morrison, and warned as a worrisome element that the government has not called for the tender in order to renew the contracts with generating companies which expire in 2016.

Interviewed by reporter Federico Mendez, on the program "Esferas de Poder", which is transmitted on Sundays from 5:00 to 6:00 in the afternoon by Santo Domingo TV, he said that in less than a year the contracts which exist with part of the energy generating companies expire. He cited among these companies the Generacion Electrica de Haina (EGE - Haina), AES Dominicana, the Compañia de Electricidad de San Pedro de Macoris (CESPM) and Palamara, La Vega, whose contracts expire in June 2016 at the latest.

"This is an element which is worrisome, because in the end one says: what is going to happen in the electric sector? This is in terms of the guarantees to be able to produce the energy which the national demand requires if you don't have a contract with these companies as such," he added.

The executive president of the Adie stressed that there is an important number of companies who have had these contracts expire and the General Law of Electricity establishes, in its article 110, that the distributors should carry out tenders in order to contract this needed energy.