Energy Minister says blackout losses will not reach consumers, three days after telling Parliament tariffs absorb them

Electricity consumers will not be made to carry the financial losses caused by the nationwide power outage, Energy Minister Anura Karunathilaka said on Friday — a firmer position than the one he set out in Parliament three days earlier.

NewsFirst reported the minister as saying that under no circumstances does the government intend to transfer losses arising from the outage, or any related losses, onto electricity consumers. He said an investigation is under way, with the Secretary to the Ministry examining the circumstances that led to the failure.

On tariffs, the minister said the relevant institutions have already informed the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka that there is no requirement to increase electricity prices in the October-to-December quarter.

What he told Parliament on Monday

The assurance is a harder line than the one recorded three days earlier. Answering New Democratic Front MP Ravi Karunanayake in Parliament on October 20 about the financial impact of the blackout on the National System Operator and other electricity sector companies, Karunathilaka said: “When a loss of this nature occurs, the NSO generally reflects it through tariffs. However, it is not possible to calculate the losses suffered by consumers,” The Morning reported.

Asked in the same exchange about compensation for damaged appliances, he said the PUCSL is the body responsible for regulating the matter and that action would follow the criteria it has issued.

The two statements are not a direct contradiction — the first describes what the NSO generally does, the second states what the government intends — but they point in opposite directions on who ultimately pays, and the second was made without reference to the first.

The outage

The nationwide failure on October 17 began at about 11.45 a.m. and brought down the entire electricity system, with supply restored to most areas by around 7.50 p.m. The NSO attributed it to severe instability in the transmission network. A formal report with recommendations is expected to go to the PUCSL and the Energy Ministry within a month of the event.

Separately, generation capacity has been returning to the grid at Norochcholai after the three-day cut schedule the PUCSL approved.

Note on sourcing

The Morning is not among the newsrooms this desk counts toward its credibility index, and is cited here for the October 20 parliamentary exchange. No verified newsroom’s own account of that exchange could be retrieved at the time of writing.