KOTA KINABALU: A power supply provider for an industrial park here has welcomed the government’s recent announcement to rationalise the imbalance cost pass-through (ICPT) surcharge for electricity consumers in Sabah and Labuan for the period of July 1 until Dec 31 of this year.
Datuk Dr Joseph Lee Han Kyun, the KKIP Power Sdn Bhd board of directors chairman, gave the thumbs up over the move, saying the government and its agencies have been working hard to make this happen.
“This is strong evidence that there has been continuous concerted efforts behind the scenes among the authorities including the Natural Resources, Environment and Climate Change Ministry and the Energy Commission, in their joint effort with the Sabah government including the state Industrial Development and Entrepreneurs Ministry and the Energy Commission of Sabah,” he said, on Saturday (July 1).
He added some credit should also be attributed to the newly appointed Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd chairman Datuk Seri Wilfred Madius Tangau.
KKIP Power is the sole electricity supply utility responsible for the transmission, distribution and reticulation of electricity in the Kota Kinabalu Industrial Park.
The Energy Commission announced on Wednesday (June 28) that medium- and high-voltage non-domestic consumers in Sabah and Labuan will see an ICPT surcharge of 2.11 sen/kWh in the second half of 2023, from 10.04 sen/kWh.
There will be no such surcharge for households in Sabah and Labuan consuming below 1,500kWh a month, as well as for all low-voltage non-domestic consumers, it said.
The ICPT refers to a mechanism under the Incentive-Based Regulation (IBR), which enables fuel costs to be adjusted every six months, based on global fuel price fluctuations.
Towards this end, Lee commended the Federal Government’s effort for having allocated a RM54.3mil subsidy, as reported by the Energy Commission, to help rationalise the ICPT surcharge rates in Sabah.
He said, however, as an improvement, it is proposed that announcement of ICPT changes in the future can be made one or two weeks earlier so that industrial players can have better planning on their production scheduling.
He hoped that stakeholders would be given an opportunity to participate in determination of the ICPT surcharge rates in future in order to make the government’s IBR and ICPT mechanism more transparent.
Meanwhile, Sabah West Coast Smart Consumers Association president David Chan said the move by the government was apt as the people were presently burdened by the rising cost of living.
He also welcomed Tenaga Nasional Berhad’s initiative to install solar panels on the roofs of buildings as a measure to obtain cheaper and environmentally friendly sources of electricity supply.
The project, he said, was important to offset the cost of electricity generation.
“This project is very important to enable the people of Sabah to continue to enjoy electricity supply at a reasonable cost as well as to allow more areas that do not have electricity supply to have the facility in the future.
“We also hope that this solar panel project will reduce the problem of frequent power outages,” he said.
