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The an­nounce­ment by Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) of a pro­posed 70 to 80 per cent hike in the price of nat­ur­al gas to its light in­dus­tri­al and com­mer­cial cus­tomers (LICs) has been the sub­ject of much de­bate over the last three weeks.

Var­i­ous state­ments from Gov­ern­ment sources sug­gest that the ra­tio­nale for the in­crease is to sus­tain NGC’s prof­itabil­i­ty. In mak­ing the an­nounce­ment, the NGC chair­man, Ger­ald Ramdeen not­ed that this pol­i­cy—of high­ly sub­sidised gas prices sold be­low ac­qui­si­tion costs, with­out any ev­i­dence of sav­ings go­ing to cus­tomers, in ex­is­tence for over a decade—is fi­nan­cial­ly un­sus­tain­able for NGC.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “NGC is not a char­i­ty. NGC can­not take a loss to make pri­vate­ly owned com­pa­nies prof­itable.”