The Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (“URCA”) is pleased to publish its Draft Annual Plan and Budget for 2023 (URCA/2023). This document outlines: A brief review of URCA’s achievements in 2022; URCA’s focus areas and key priorities for 2023; URCA’s key projects for 2023, including its planned consultation schedule for the year; A series of the key performance indicators which URCA shall use to measure its performance during the year; and URCA’s budget for the upcoming financial year. The Draft Annual Plan can be found here. URCA invites and welcomes comments and submissions from members of the public, licensees and…
NASSAU, THE BAHAMAS (15 December 2022): The Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (“URCA”) has completed its review of Bahamas Power and Light Company Ltd. (BPL) proposed fuel charge increase.BPL made the announcement in early October 2022 of a glide path increase to commence on its November 2022 bills. As the regulator for the country’s electricity sector, URCA conducted a comprehensive review of BPL’s fuel charge increase proposal. At the conclusion of that review, URCA determined that it is satisfied that BPL has made an adequate case for the rate increases outlined in its press statement dated 04 October 2022. However,…
The Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA) has today issued its Revised Fee Schedule 2022. The Revised Fee Schedule 2022 includes an Application Fee for Satellite Broadband Internet User Terminals (Table 11C). The revised Fee Schedule 2022 can be found here.
NASSAU, THE BAHAMAS (5 DECEMBER 2022): The Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (‘URCA’) issued a Final Determination and Order to Cable Bahamas Limited (‘CBL’) following URCA’s investigation into the quality of service of CBL’s pay television service. Among other things, URCA fines the licensee 2.025% of its monthly recurring pay TV charges for the year 2021. The investigation, commencing July 2021, was in response to numerous complaints from customers following CBL’s price applications to restructure/repackage its pay television packages in October 2020 and January 2021 for residential and business customers respectively. Specifically, URCA’s investigation reviewed recurring issues including outages, error messages,…
