The administration remains noncommittal about when the Commonwealth Utilities Corporation\u2019s fuel surcharge will be scrapped.<\/p>\n
Lt. Gov. Timothy P. Villagomez said Friday that the removal of the fuel surcharge would depend on CUC\u2019s ability to collect utility revenues.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to remove the fuel surcharge but it depends on CUC\u2019s reliability. [The fuel surcharge will remain] until CUC can procure [fuel] on its own,\u201d Villagomez said.<\/p>\n
However, he expressed hope that the added fee would be removed in six months.<\/p>\n
The administration had promised to scrap the fuel surcharge during the 2005 election campaign. It announced the six-month deadline for surcharge abolition after it assumed office in January.<\/p>\n
CUC data show that the utility firm earned an additional monthly income of $1.2 million from the fuel surcharge.<\/p>\n
Between October 2004 and April 2005\u2014before the surcharge was implemented\u2014utility fees paid by residential and commercial customers averaged $4.9 million. However, the figure climbed to $6.3 million in May 2005, the first month that the surcharge was put in place.<\/p>\n
Since then, CUC\u2019s collection from households and businesses has averaged $6.1 million from May 2005 to January 2006.<\/p>\n
Government agencies, as well as residential and commercial customers, are assessed the fuel surcharge, which amounts to 3.5 cents per kwh.<\/p>\n
However, CUC data do not provide a breakdown of the government\u2019s actual billing and the subsidy provided to the utility.<\/p>\n
The government used to pay CUC $650,000 monthly. But beginning February 2005, the government has been providing CUC with subsidy for its fuel purchases. CUC has since been receiving an average of $1.7 million from the government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The administration remains noncommittal about when the Commonwealth Utilities Corporation\u2019s fuel surcharge will be scrapped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}