National Federation Party Leader Professor Biman Prasad [left] and Minister for Economy Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum

National Federation Party Leader Professor Biman Prasad’s dire trait of speculating the submission made by Energy Fiji Limited has been put under the spotlight.

Minister for Economy Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum has finally spoken out saying, NFP is politicizing the issue and their party leader does not understand the commercial realities of how things operate on the ground.

Already pre-judging the submission by EFL to increase tariffs, the matter is once again being used as a political football by the NFP leader.

Biman – “The EFL submission says tariff rates should be reviewed every four years this obviously means that consumers must brace for tariff hike after every four years”

AG – “So here you have the leader of NFP already pre-judging it, if he wants to make a submission he’s welcome like anybody else to make a submission but what is quite detrimental to the economy is that you have a politician like him trying to interfere with the due process”

Sayed-Khaiyum says the submission by EFL to increase tariff will be determined by suggestions received from the public.

However, Prasad has his own justification on the issue.

Biman – “EFL also claims that tariff rights are the lowest in the region this is the usual argument that we’ve had even lower than some parts of Australia and New Zealand this is actually nipped picking there is no comparison”

AG – “Comes along this politician wanting to interfere with it because he wants to play politics to gain popularity but what he has done in the long term is actually undermining the commercial based of that particular sector”

EFL has clarified that the tariff increase is to keep the commercial statutory organization abreast with inflation and to reflect the true electricity cost for Fiji.