Energy body to refund electric meter deposits
The Office of the Energy Regulatory Commission of Thailand (ERC) announced this weekend that it is planning to refund electric meter deposit to users who have paid their electric bill on time for 1 year.
Narupat Amornkosit, secretary-general of the ERC announced on Sunday (Dec. 1) that ERC has discussed with Metropolitan Electricity Authority (MEA) and Provincial Electricity Authority (PEA) and agreed to a plan to refund the deposit money for electric meter to good clients who have been paying their power bills on time for a full year. “This refund will be available only to individual customers, covering residential houses and small enterprises,” she added. “Corporate and industrial clients are not included in this deposit refund programme because they put in deposit in the form of bank guarantee.”
Narupat further explained that the existing rule is to refund only the interest of deposit every 5 years. “Since the interest was calculated under Krungthai Bank’s deposit rate, each user will get around Bt20 only, which is a too small amount for the wait of 5 years,” she said.
According to the secretary-general, MEA and PEA have combined individual electricity users of 22 million, each user had to pay the deposit for electrical meter of Bt2,000-Bt4,000 depending on types and capacities. “We estimated the budget to be used as deposit refund at Bt20 billion,” said Narupat. “However, users who already collected the deposit refund will have to pay the deposit again if they apply for a new meter.”