Korea: Seoul moving to raise household power rates by 100 percent

Electricity charges for households are likely to be raised in the near future by up to 100 percent.

The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said yesterday that it will discuss its plan to reform the current system of unrealistically low power rates at a meeting of economic ministers today.

The reform plan is focused on raising the power rates for households. According to the ministry, the government is considering simplifying the present seven-category charging system to a four or five-stage system, and increasing the unit rate imposed on each stage by 50 to 100 percent.

Presently, the rate applied to households consuming less than 50kW of electricity a month is below cost. But the government plans to increase the rate to nearly match the cost.

Generating 1kW of electricity costs 71 won (64 cents) in general, but the government has supplied it at 34 won per kW for households using less than 50kW.

When the reform plan is adopted, officials estimated that a household consuming more than 300kW of electricity a month would see fees increase by at least 50 percent.

The government has also applied below-cost rates to industrial plants, but the fees are to be raised, too, in the long-term, officials said.

"We found it inevitable to make the raises in light of the planned reform of the nation's electric power industry," said an official. (SHS)

Updated: 09/15/2000

http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/news/2000/09/__05/20000915_0539.htm

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), September 15, 2000