By Guevara Leacock
On A View from the Outside this week, we return to the electricity issue, with the view being that VINLEC belongs to the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and it answers to them.
Last week, we looked at the fuel surcharge and explained why swapping it for a standing charge would not bring electricity bills down. This week’s view is not prompted by any new announcement but by the outcry of Vincentians. Since last week’s View, several Vincentians have emailed or messaged us to express concern, distress and despair about their electricity bills.
In doing research for this week’s view, one Vincentian said to us, “You should do a part two, because this is too critical of an issue.” We agree. The same Vincentian told us that their light bill has crept from under EC$400 a month to close to EC$600 within two months.
Think about what that means. Cumulatively, EC$600 a month is EC$7,200 a year on electricity alone. For a poorer family paying EC$200 a month, it is EC$2,400 a year. That may not seem like a lot of money to some but in a country where the economy is as hard as rock, it is a lot. A smaller electricity bill means that Vincentians, you, could have more money to spend on food, school books or rent.
One question that was posed in an email we received was: How much profit does VINLEC make? And the suggestion was that no one really knows. In fact, many Vincentians believe nobody knows. The answer sits on VINLEC’s own website, in its audited accounts, for anyone who knows where to look.
You can find it on their website under the “about VINLEC” tab. But does VINLEC publish their accounts in the print and online media? If not, maybe they should, since making this information accessible is a part of transparency and accountability. If you are going to rip out the pockets of your customers, you owe them some explanation.
The last audited accounts for VINLEC on their website are from 2024. In 2024, VINLEC took in EC$175.2 million and made a profit of EC$13.2 million. That was almost double the EC$6.65 million it made in 2023. By the end of 2024, VINLEC had EC$125.9 million in profits kept back over the years. It also had EC$21 million in cash and about EC$48 million in investments, including government bonds and treasury bills.
Corporate entities make profits; that is normal. VINLEC has to replace engines, poles, lines, meters and switchgear like the equipment at Lowmans Bay that failed in 2024 and blacked out the whole island twice. In 2024, VINLEC spent about EC$20.2 million on new plant and equipment. VINLEC also paid no dividend to the government in 2023 or 2024, so all of the profit they earned stayed in the company.
On the point of profits in large corporate entities, the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, told a CARICOM meeting with the private sector that Massy could not make BDS$49 million in profit in Barbados while middle-class people could not afford to buy food.
Massy is a private company with private shareholders. VINLEC has one shareholder — the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, which means the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. If a prime minister can put that question to a private supermarket chain, Vincentians can certainly put it to a company they own.
VINLEC says it makes no profit on the fuel surcharge. Its own accounts show that in each of the last three years the surcharge collected did not match the cost of fuel. In 2022 VINLEC collected about EC$510,000 less through the surcharge than the fuel cost it was meant to cover. In 2023 and 2024 together, it collected about EC$1.7 million more. Taken over those three years, Vincentians paid about EC$1.2 million more in fuel surcharge than the fuel cost it was charged for.
To be fair to VINLEC, that is small in comparison to a fuel bill of around EC$90 million a year, and the likely reason is timing, because each month’s surcharge is worked out from one month’s fuel and charged on the next month’s units. But that does not change the fact that the accounts show no running balance to be paid back to customers, and apart from the yearly audit, no independent body checks the figures. The difference simply becomes part of VINLEC’s profit, or its loss.
That brings us to the real problem. Under the Electricity Supply Act of 1973, VINLEC holds an exclusive licence to generate and sell electricity for 60 years, until 2033, and its rates are settled between VINLEC and the relevant government minister. St. Vincent and the Grenadines has no independent utilities regulator. Saint Lucia set one up in 2016, and so did Grenada. Barbados and Jamaica have had one for years.
The absence of a regulator matters for solar too, which we said last week should be explored as a solution to lowering your electricity bills. In August, VINLEC’s Chief Executive, Dr. Vaughn Lewis, said that crediting customers for the power their solar panels send back into the grid cost VINLEC EC$2.7 million last year, and that the cost has to be carried by the base rate.
We on A View from the Outside do not accuse VINLEC of bad faith but a company that earns its money by the unit will always see a solar panel on your roof as a cost. That is exactly why the rules for rooftop solar cannot be left to VINLEC alone. It is not in their best interest to allow it; neither does the law help you, the ordinary Vincentian. What VINLEC needs is competition.
Trinidad and Tobago has a Ministry of Public Utilities, so the public knows whose door to knock on when their light bill climbs. In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, energy sits inside the Ministry of Health, Wellness, Environmental Health and Energy. With the greatest respect to the Honourable Daniel Cummings, who carries one of the heaviest portfolios in government, energy is the last word in his portfolio title. Vincentians paying nearly 80 cents a unit in fuel surcharge deserve a minister who answers for their light bill as a matter of priority.
Do you remember the National Energy Action Plan of 2010? The Unity Labour Party (ULP) government set a target of 30% of Vincentians’ electricity to be sourced from renewable sources by 2015 and 60% by 2020. It is now 2026, and the figure is about 16 to 17%, by VINLEC’s own records.
Do you remember Vincentians being told in Parliament in December 2014 that geothermal power would be producing 10 megawatts by the end of 2017? By the end of 2019, about US$32.5 million had been spent. The wells could not deliver and the project stalled. VINLEC’s 2024 accounts still show about EC$2 million owed by the government on a bridging loan VINLEC advanced for the geothermal company.
In July, the leadership of the ULP said that asking VINLEC to absorb part of the surcharge was unsustainable and put maintenance at risk. The subsidy VINLEC applied to July bills was EC$734,959. That is about one-18th of the profit VINLEC made in 2024.
At the end of September, the ULP asked whether VINLEC and other statutory bodies are being pressed to buy government bonds to help pay salaries. Yet VINLEC’s own 2024 accounts record that money the ULP government owed to VINLEC was settled with an EC$25 million government bond, issued in 2024 at 7.5% interest. The ULP leadership is in no position to complain about a practice its own government used.
The New Democratic Party (NDP) government acted in May with tax relief on diesel and a VINLEC subsidy that held the surcharge down. However, since then the prime minister has urged VINLEC, appealed to VINLEC and asked VINLEC for grace on disconnections.
VINLEC belongs to the government and the government appoints its board. As one media house put it in August, policy extends beyond urging. At a town hall meeting on Sept. 20, the prime minister said of the state-owned enterprises: “We owe you accountability.” We on A View from the Outside agree, and accountability for VINLEC should begin with what Vincentians pay for their electricity.
We on A View from the Outside have no quarrel with the men and women of VINLEC. Our concern is how VINLEC is governed and who it answers to. Nobody is asking VINLEC to run at a loss. Vincentians want to be told in plain language where their money goes, and they want to see a serious plan to bring their electricity bills down.
The government should require VINLEC to publish its audited accounts in the media and not just on its website. A full annual report within six months of the end of each year should be laid before Parliament so that Vincentians can see how their company is doing without searching a website.
The government should require VINLEC to publish each month’s surcharge workings in full, the fuel bought, the price paid, the units sold and any amount over or under collected, so that money collected above the cost of fuel comes back to customers on later bills. Years ago VINLEC printed exactly this in a small space in The Vincentian newspaper, and it can do so again.
The government should bring legislation for an independent utilities regulator before VINLEC’s licence ends in 2033, so that somebody other than VINLEC and the minister checks the tariff and hears complaints. The government should also tell Vincentians what will replace the solar plant on Union Island that was written off after Hurricane Beryl, and the hydro power lost when Cumberland 3 was shut down in 2025, so that we stop going backwards on renewable power.
In the coming days when somebody tells you that VINLEC’s profits are none of your business, remind them who owns VINLEC. When the price of oil falls and the surcharge comes down again, do not get comfortable. As one Vincentian said to us, when the surcharge drops back to 20-something cents, everybody gets comfortable again. Ask your representative when the law of 1973 will be replaced and ask who, outside VINLEC, checks the fuel surcharge before it reaches your bill. Right now, the answer is nobody.
*Guevara Leacock is a barrister at law of Lincoln’s Inn in England and an attorney at law in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. He has a keen interest in history and politics and is a social commentator.
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