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Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said Thursday that its household electricity rate will not start on July 1, as originally planned, and will be delayed by at least a month until early August.
Last month, TEPCO officially applied to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to hike household rates by about 10% as part of its business turnaround plan. TEPCO has already started hiking rates for corporate users by 17% in order to bring the utility an additional 680 billion yen a year on average.
However, Economy Minister Yukio Edano must give final approval to the plan. Ministry officials said that the approval process, which is being conducted by a panel of experts examining to see if TEPCO has done all it can to reform itself.
Edano said that before a hike in household rates can be approved, TEPCO must implement cost-cutting measures worth about 3.3 trillion yen over 10 years, sell assets including some thermal power plants and real estate.
The officials said the screening process is not likely to finish until the end of June, making it impossible for a rate hike to commence on July 1, Sankei Shimbun reported.
Once implemented, the new rates for households will be applied for three years, with monthly charges going up by an average of 480 yen.
The government has already committed to inject 1 trillion yen of taxpayers' money to minimize financing and insolvency risks. In so doing, the government will take more than 50% voting rights, which will effectively nationalize TEPCO.
TEPCO last increased household rates in 1980.
© Japan Today/AFP
8 Comments
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sillygirl
the rate hikes should not start at all since our taxpayer money is already minimizing the risks. sheesh. how many times do we have to bend over.
dr8kangas@gmail.com
Chop from the top. No executive should make $100,000. a year. These people caused the greatest disaster since Hiroshima. Fight the nukes, install solar. Starting July 1, homeowners can make $1,000. a month harvesting solar energy from their roofs and selling it onto the grid, with the new Feed in Tariff law.
Onniyama
Jun. I guarantee you all the execs get a nice raise in pay. If those negligent b@#$%&ds had spent a few billion yen on proper safety measures (like they were advised) none of this would have happened. Now the tax payer must suffer yet again.
some14some
wisely delayed, it is preferable after bonus not before.
DoLittleBeLate
Zichi is correct. Separating power generating companies from distributors would create healthy capitalist competition and would lower consumer prices. It has been done in many countries with exactly those results, there is no doubt that it works just that way.
Could that be the reason why Japan won't do it? Because somebody else thought it first?
basroil
@zichi, stop with the same useless canned response. The average electrical use in NYC is actually only 60% the average use in Japan. And the 50% higher cost is because it costs 75% more to produce (except nuclear, which costs just 20% more, and the reason why Japan was moving to 50% nuclear in an effort to stave off higher bills)
@noname : Steal more money from everyone else that lives in an apartment and can't abuse a law designed to protect big companies (that make, install, and use solar)?
6.8 billion is enough to install a new ESWR reactor every year. That cuts the costs a lot.