by Sharon Udasin
Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz completed the transfer of NIS 435 million worth of Palestinian financial forfeiture to the Israel Electric Corporation on Wednesday morning, the ministry announced later that day.
The Palestinian Authority has already accumulated hundreds of millions of shekels in debt that it owes to the IEC, the Finance Ministry stressed. While during past political crises the Israeli government has simply decided to delay the transfer of funds to the PA, this time, in the background of the PA’s unilateral request for UN status, Steinitz and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu decided to transfer the Palestinian assets directly to the IEC, the ministry said.
The NIS 435 million worth of PA forfeitures transferred to the IEC come from income taxes collected by Israel on the PA's behalf each month that are typically transferred to the authority at the month's conclusion. Before transferring the monthly total, the Israeli government can deduct allocations for electricity, water, hospital treatments and other infrastructural services that the country provides to the PA.
In August, the IEC had first warned that it might perform intermittent West Bank power supply cuts due to NIS 662-million worth of unpaid debts from Palestinian electricity users – a decision that was postponed due to the Ramadan holiday. Today, however, that number has risen to nearly NIS 730 million, according to Hisham Omari, CEO of the Jerusalem District Electricity Company (JDECO), who spoke with The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
JDECO, which provides power to East Jerusalem and the eastern portion of the West Bank owed the IEC NIS 423 million alone as of August and now owes nearly NIS 460 million, according to Omari. The remaining amount of debt comes from a combination of the Gaza Strip and areas in the northern and southern West Bank that fall outside of JDECO's jurisdiction and are instead the PA’s direct responsibility.
JDECO had accrued such a debt to the IEC primarily because refugee camp residents tend to refuse to pay their bills to the Palestinian electricity distributor and because government bodies have also faltered on their electricity payments, Omari had told the Post in August. Because the PA government has been struggling financially, it has also sliced employees’ wages, creating a situation where neither the government institutions nor the individuals who work there are willing to pay their bills to JDECO. Meanwhile, electricity theft is rampant in Area C of the West Bank because Palestinian police forces are unable to patrol there, Omari had said.
The debt accumulated outside of JDECO's region is even more of a challenge to recover than that from within its range. After deducting all necessary allocations from the income tax that the government collects on the PA's behalf, Israel typically transfers an approximately 55 million segment of the deduction to the IEC, to pay for the electricity going to the Gaza Strip and the northern and southern West Bank, according to Omari. In Gaza, however, although the Hamas government collects fees from its citizens for electricity use, the government never transfers these fees to the Palestinian Energy Authority in Ramallah and uses the money for its own purposes, Omari explained in August. All of Gaza therefore essentially receives electricity "free of charge," he had added.
As for the NIS 435 million transfer in forfeitures that occurred on Wednesday morning, Omari said he only learned about the deduction from the media and has not yet received any "formal news that we can speak about." There has not yet been any indication as to how the debt coverage will be distributed and whether JDECO will benefit from the forfeiture.
"When they give back this amount I don't know how they will distribute it," Omari told the Post. "If they will include us or not, I don't have any real official information."
Sharon Udasin
Source: http://www.jpost.com/Sci-Tech/Article.aspx?id=295690
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
1 comment:
Such honesty, I LOVE it!
Post a Comment