New SONABEL pricing: households are not affected, reassures the CEO

2023-09-25 09:11:11

• Removal of the State subsidy for a category of customers

• Rearrangement of hourly billing positions

• The State would gain at least 10 billion FCFA every year

n September 12, the Minister of Energy, Simon-Pierre Boussim, explained to the press the new measure on the tariff adjustment of the Burkinabè National Electricity Company (SONABEL). Despite this media outing, gray areas still seemed to exist in public opinion. Faced with this situation, the Director General of SONABEL, Souleymane Ouédraogo, hosted a press conference on September 13, 2023, in Ouagadougou, to give “more detailed information” on this issue.

According to him, the series of measures adopted by the Council of Ministers on September 6, 2023 is intended to improve the financial performance of SONABEL. Among these measures, there is the application of non-subsidized prices to certain categories of customers. According to the DG, from 2006 to 2022, the State disbursed 440 billion FCFA in subsidies granted to SONABEL. “SONABEL’s current pricing structure does not differentiate between customers. Which means that the State subsidy benefits all customers. Given that the subsidy has a social role, the objective of this new pricing is to identify a category of customers for whom the State subsidy is not necessary,” he explained, before add that this measure corrects a long-standing distortion.

These include, in particular, banks and other financial institutions, insurance companies, telecommunications companies, international institutions, diplomatic enclaves and tobacco industries. The DG took this opportunity to reassure that the series of measures does not concern households.

Added to this is the rearrangement of the electricity tariff structure, consisting of moving the high daytime tariffs towards the evening peak and the lower evening tariffs towards the daytime. The objective is to encourage large consumers (businesses) to shift their energy demand from night to day. In addition, there is a measure which gives industrialists and other large consumers who wish to make investments in the energy sector the possibility of negotiating advantages on their billing.

The last measure relates to the elimination of the bonus and the readjustment of penalties for poor consumption. In fact, explains Mr. Ouédraogo, there are two forms of energy consumed by the customer. Reactive energy and active energy. However, the excessive consumption of reactive energy forces SONABEL to oversize its equipment to satisfy it.

So, a policy was put in place to penalize those who consume a lot of reagents and reward those who consume less. With this measure, they will no longer benefit from a discount. They will simply be thanked with congratulatory letters.

Souleymane Ouédraogo finds these measures beneficial which will allow the State to save at least 10 billion FCFA every year.

T.A

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What is changing in the new price list?

«SIf you compare the new grid to the old one, you will notice that two things have been added. The first is the creation of the special customer category (mentioned above) which has a different, non-subsidized rate of 160 FCFA. In addition, there are the hourly billing positions that have changed. Before, peak hours in Burkina Faso were 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. and the rest were peak hours. Now the peak hours are from 5 p.m. to midnight and the rest are peak hours. This is why we insist that there was no price increase. We simply decided that there are categories of customers who have the financial capacity to pay a fair bill (editor’s note, without state subsidy),” explained the CEO.