The president of the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce (JCC), Ian Neita, is calling on the Government to state its alternative energy plans explicitly.

Speaking at a recent Jamaica Observer Business Forum, Neita said “we are getting mixed signals. For example, the other day the price of batteries went up. It has come back down but if the government is wedded to alternate energy then you would see a better fiscal policy in respect of alternate energy.”

The JCC president said at a recent Jamaica Observer Business Forum that energy independence is something his organisation is focusing on this year.

He said, “This came about because we had the war in Europe and we were under threat of losing our oil supply, because if you have a shortage of oil it’s the person with the biggest buck that will end up with the supply. Oil is critical in everything we do! That’s why we invited the president of JPS to sit with us in a wide open breakfast forum and tell us what his views are for Jamaica’s energy in the future.”

Neita argues, for example, that “if you go a bit more into private power in the strictest sense, residential electricity generation, you need to have reasonable prices to set up the panels, you need to have a policy that integrates you with the JPS grid, it’s called net metering. That policy is not very clear, so Jamaicans in general don’t know, for example, how to go about setting up coming off the grid.”

To that end, the JCC president is calling for policies which deals with building permits that would insist on alternate energy.

“Just like how they are insisting now on having a separate water storage, we need to have those permits driving and reducing our dependency in a country with so much sunshine and such a high electricity costs,” he explained.

Jamaican are paying about $0.32 per kilowatt hour, which is recognised as one of the highest in the region.

Aside from that, Neita said they also need to be a policy addressing the emerging electric vehicles market.

“There is a quota on the amount you can import with a tax break and even then, you don’t get the tax break if you bring it in as an individual, you only get that tax break if you bring it through the dealer and that is another issue. So people are trying to find ways as individuals to bring in these vehicles and it shouldn’t be like that, you should have a policy in place if you’re trying to reduce your dependency on oil,” Neita argued.

In the same vein, he encouraged lawmakers to revisit the tax structure specifically relating to equipment or devices which uses alternate energy.

“You have to look at duties, you have to reduce or eliminate duties, just like how we are also trying to encourage digitisation, duties on tablets should be eliminated so we can have a society with access to the Internet. You can determine actively through fiscal policies, it doesn’t have to be done forever either, you can have a period of holiday, where can say to people, listen if you want to bring in solar water heaters, LED bulbs, those are things that drive, the shift,” he stated.

Continuing he noted, “We have to think long term, we believe that in the long term if you drive productivity by getting people to invest with these methods and invest in the economy, that is going to broaden the economic base, broaden the wealth, and produce revenue for the country.”