Puerto Rico Legislators Want Quick Rescue of Power Company

Legislators on Tuesday demanded quicker action to rescue Puerto Rico's public power company, expressing dissatisfaction over the pace of a multimillion-dollar plan to improve its finances.

Members of the island's Senate Commission of Energy Affairs expressed concern the Electric Energy Authority might fall into receivership if the bondholders' debt is not paid soon.
"It's very important that we solve an issue that is really hurting the economy of Puerto Rico," Sen. Eduardo Bhatia said.
The authority's chief restructuring officer, Lisa Donahue, told the commission she will present a first draft by June 1 on how she plans to save the company.
"We get one chance to do this right. I wish it could go faster. It can't go faster," she said. "When our report is final, there will be very tough decisions that will require bipartisan support."
The Electric Energy Authority holds nearly $9 billion in debt and owes investors some $400 million by July. A bondholder group announced Tuesday that it has offered to extend the forbearance agreement for 30 more days after the government obtained a two-week extension earlier this month. The power company's board president, Harry Rodriguez, said Tuesday that no deal has been reached and accused the group of publicly releasing an incomplete summary of the newest proposal.
Donahue said if the deadline is not eventually met, the U.S. territory's government could face a 30-day default notice and bondholders could then file for appointment of a receiver.
Sen. Ramon Luis Nieves, who oversees the energy affairs commission, noted the U.S. territory's government is paying a total of $17.4 million to various firms to help strengthen the power company's finances.
"People have been asking, 'Are these agreements justified?'" he said. "Up until now we have no business plan, no recovery plan."
The bondholder group recently offered to invest $2 billion in energy production and other measures to improve the power company's finances and infrastructure. Donahue said Tuesday that some elements of the plan were helpful but others would not work given technical, systematic, regulatory or environmental issues.
Donahue said one of the power company's main challenges is dealing with a turnover of more than 200 management positions whenever a new party takes over the territory's governorship.
"Operating a business where you can't plan for the long term is an impossible task," she said.
By DANICA COTO

Puerto Rico Legislators Want Quick Rescue of Power Company

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IMF Executive Board Discusses the First Assessment of Eligible Countries under the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative

On December 21, 2005 the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) established the list of countries that qualify for debt relief from the Fund under the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI). Debt relief delivery, which could start as soon as January 3, 2005, is now conditional on getting the consents of all the contributors to the Subsidy Account of the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) Trust, whose contributions help finance the Initiative. The MDRI will deliver debt relief from the Fund to qualifying members countries with an annual per capita income at or below US$380, and to countries above the threshold that have reached the completion point under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. The implementation of the MDRI will reduce the external debt burden of a number of the world's poorest countries and will provide additional resources to help them reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Background The Executive Board appro...
Read more

Oil’s chaotic collapse deepens; stocks drop worldwide

Image
NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices crumpled even further Tuesday, and U.S. stocks sank to their worst loss in weeks as worries swept markets worldwide about the economic carnage caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The market’s spotlight was again on oil, where prices have plummeted because very few people are flying or driving, and factories have shut amid widespread stay-at-home orders. Global demand is set to drop to levels last seen in the mid 1990s. At the same time, oil producers can’t slow their production fast enough, and all the extra crude means storage tanks are quickly running out of room. The cost for a barrel of U.S. oil to be delivered in June plunged 43% to $11.57. That’s the part of the market that oil traders are focused on and trading most actively. For oil to be delivered next month, which is when storage tanks could top out, the cost of a barrel stood at $10.01. A day earlier, it fell below zero for the first time, meaning traders paid others to take oil off their hand...
Read more

Mapping Extreme Poverty Around the World A new report from the

Image
A new report from the  World Bank  just landed, finding that a record low of 10% of humanity now live in extreme poverty, down from 11% in 2013. But poverty rates aren’t anywhere close to equal between continents or even countries, as our new series of maps clearly demonstrates. The World Bank provides an in-depth explanation for its methodology, which you can find in Appendix A of the full report  here . We focused on the percentage of people in each country living below what the World Bank defines as extreme poverty, or $1.90/day. We’ll let the researchers defend this definition on their own, but there is one caveat to keep in mind. It can be extraordinarily difficult to collect reliable data from so many countries on a regular basis, and in fact we used the latest year in which numbers were available whenever possible. For example, in some of these maps we compare 2011 figures against 2015. In short, our maps provide the clearest possible apples-to-apples compa...
Read more