Power Tariffs : Caught between Cost Recovery and Affordability

Briceno-Garmendia, Cecilia ; Shkaratan, Maria

关键词: ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS;    ASSET VALUE;    AVAILABILITY;    BALANCE;    BLOCK TARIFF;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-5904
RP-ID  :  WPS5904

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This is the first paper to build acomprehensive empirical picture of power pricing practicesacross Sub-Saharan Africa, based on a new database of tariffstructures in 27 countries for the years 2004-2008. Using avariety of quantitative indicators, the paper evaluates theperformance of electricity tariffs against four key policyobjectives: recovery of historic power production costs,efficient signaling of future power production costs,affordability to low income households, and distributionalequity. As regards cost recovery, 80 percent of thecountries in the sample fully recover operating costs, whileonly around 30 percent of the countries are practicing fullrecovery of capital costs. However, due to the fact thatfuture power development may be based on a shift toward moreeconomic technologies than those available in the past,existing tariffs look as though they would be consistentwith Long Run Marginal Costs in nearly 40 percent ofcountries and hence provide efficient pricing signals. Asregards affordability, today's average effectivetariffs are affordable for 90 percent of today'scustomers. However, they would only be affordable for 25percent of households that remain unconnected to the grid.Tariffs consistent with full recovery of economic costswould be affordable for 70 percent of the population. Asregards equity, the highly regressive patterns of access topower services, ensure that subsidies delivered throughelectricity tariffs are without exception also highlyregressive in distributional incidence. The conclusion isthat achieving all four of these policy objectivessimultaneously is almost impossible in the context of thehigh-cost low-income environment that characterizes much ofSSA today. Hence most countries find themselves caughtbetween cost recovery and affordability.