Who says govt cannot declassify IPP agreements?

Non-profit think tank Research for Social Advancement (REFSA) has called on the government to declassifiy power purchase agreements with the independent power producers (IPPs) in order to give clearer picture with regards to subsidy allocations.

"Open access will enable interested members of the public to make their own enquiries and analysis, and contribute intelligently to the resolution of this issue," said its executive director Teh Chi-Chang in a statement toHarakahdaily.

He pointed out that the agreements with the IPPs were not all secret as they were showed to bankers and rating agencies in the course of making financial borrowings for its investments.

"To facilitate financing, ratings agencies and bankers had access to the PPAs. Indeed, publicly available reports by the ratings agencies often allude to terms contained within the PPAs," he said.

According to Teh, making the documents public will allow Malaysians "to have the pertinent facts and figures on hand and facilitate reasoned, constructive debate".

The NGO was responding to renewed public debate on the government's so-called 'subsidy rationalisation' programme, which recently resulted in price hikes involving several items.

The latest involving a 7 percent hike in electricity tariff was announced by the government yesterday.

Pakatan Rakyat leaders had maintained that IPPs were given subsidies by the government, but the benefit of these subsidies had not been passed on to end consumers who had to pay high electricity rate.

REFSA reminded that the agreements with IPPs should be made available to shareholders, in line with the requirement by Bursa Malaysia.

He said this was the case when Tanjong Plc acquired Powertek Berhad and Malakoff Berhad acquired Tanjong Bin power plant.

"The PPAs were made available for inspection by shareholders of Tanjong and Malakoff. Indeed, REFSA’s executive director Teh Chi-Chang scrutinized the Powertek PPAs when they were available for inspection," it said.

REFSA said PPAs were commercial contracts for the provision of power generation services, similar to the toll concessions.

"The declassification of the toll concessions resulted in a positive result for Malaysians – two toll rate hikes on PLUS have been deferred and it appears future hikes will be much lower than initially proposed," it added.

- Harakahdaily