Electricity, gas, water price spikes: politics as usual

Reuters reports:

Taiwan's economic ministry said on Monday that said Taipower has applied to raise electricity prices by mid-May in response to a surge in global crude prices this year.

State-owned Taipower has proposed raising electricity prices for industrial use by 20-30 percent and residential tariffs by up to 10 percent and commercial rates by more than 20 percent, the ministry said.

Taiwan Today offers additional information:

The latest statistics released by the U.S. Department of Energy reveal that Taiwan’s electricity rates for households and industrial users are the second and fourth lowest in the world.

The subsidy regime encourages the development of businesses like naptha cracking whose profitability derives largely from massive subsidies to electricity and water. One wonders whether the Ma Administration let the proposed naptha cracker in Changhua die because it realized that the project was going to be uneconomical once higher water and electricity prices were factored in, and the protests of environmentalists provided a convenient excuse.

The DPP is criticizing the government for hiking prices and for keeping them low before the election, and for not reviewing the CPC's pay policies. What they really should be doing is criticizing the government for its narrow-minded, unimaginative policies -- not providing monies and policy initiatives for weatherization and solarization, not promoting building codes to green Taiwan's infrastructure, not promoting cycling to work, not installing utility-scale wind, and similar. The DPP's criticisms lack vision.... for years Taiwanese have lived in a bubble created by subsidized water and electricity prices. Rude awakening time -- the DPP really ought to be thanking Ma for doing what Chen lacked the courage to do during his second administration.
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