The government could officially take over the Ede-Este today

SANTO DOMINGO.- In the middle of a process of nationalization of the electric sector, with the purchase by the government of the Electricity Distributor of the East (Ede-Este) and with strong criticisms from the business sector for this step, the Dominican Corporation of State-owned Electrical Enterprises (CDEEE) has called a press conference for today in which it is expected to offer greater details on the negotiations.

Even though the Superintendent of Electricity, Francisco Mendez, said that the purchase of official and that the price is between US$20 and US$25 million, the detail of the deal are still unknown, since the person who headed the negotiations was the vice president of the CDEEE, Radhames Segura.

Neither is it known where the resources will come from, since the government does not have money on hand to pay the generators who are calling for payment of a debt pending since 2004 that is more than US$600 million, to which one could add the fall of RD$6.38 billion in income for the government so far this year. Segura says that the debt with the generators is around US$288 million.

Over the past few months, the conflicts in the electric sector have become more pronounced, as have the blackouts, and in the words of the president of the SID Group (what used to be called "La Manicera") Jose Miguel Bonetti Guerra, since the decade of the 50s when the electric company was first nationalized, the country has had one of the worst electricity services, with blackouts, high costs and an excessive and unnecessary state bureaucracy.

The president of the National Council of Private Enterprise (CONEP), Lisandro Macarrulla, and the businessmen from Santiago joined the critics of the purchase of Ede-Este by the government. For Macarrulla the process has turned inwards, while Antonio Isa Conde, who was at the forefront of the capitalization of the state businesses during the first Fernandez administration, said that the purchase is a step backwards in the process.

In the middle of this scenario, the Presidential Committee for the Strengthening of the Electricity Sector, created by Decree #814 on 5 December 2008, has only met once, in spite of Article 3 of the Decree that says that it should meet at least once a month and is allowed to meet as often as necessary upon being convened by its president.

Many of the members of the commission are waiting for a summons from President Fernandez who has delayed meeting again with the members of this committee that in the majority are known as successful businessmen.

Over the last months, businessmen have called for radical solutions and even a change in the electric model in order to compete. The recent events, such as the embargo by the generators on the accounts of the electricity distributors, the lack of resources on the part of the government to fulfill their part of the deficit of the sector, worry the business sector. So do the threats of the generators that they will turn off their plants if they are not paid and the issue of the effective application of the criminalization of electricity fraud.