Open market electricity – Is it fair to all consumers?

Dear Sir/Mdm,

From my understanding, the Open Market electricity has helped reduce the cost of electricity bills for those households that have switched to other retailers, easily saving 10% to 30% from the published rates compared to those who still stay with SP Services.

The reason SP Services say that their electricity rate is so much higher is because they need to have the differences in margin (profits) so that the money can be used to build electricity infrastructure and for maintenance of the grids.

Is it fair for those who are with SP Services to have to pay for the cost of infrastructure and maintenance whereas those who switched to other retailers, don’t have to?

And why do we need so many duplication of cost centres from these retailers, it was near to 20 retailers but now it has dropped to 13 as a few find it not profitable to do business? Isn’t it a waste of manpower costs and resources from these competing retailers, many of whom are linked to GLCs, and isn’t Temasek the ultimate owner?

We should just have a single electricity provider who can give us a discount, okay, not 20% or 30% but maybe around 10% would be good with the money saved for infrastructure and maintenance costs.

If SP Services finds it hard to run this very lucrative business, then it should be tendered out to the better but cheaper player. There will be many willing to bid for this.

A concerned citizen
Joe Low

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of The Independent Singapore.