OFFICE of Utilities Regulation (OUR) said it is not expecting any application for a tariff review from Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) until this October, with the company currently occupied with restoring electricity in pockets of rural Jamaica that remain without power six weeks after Hurricane Beryl.

The light and power company should have submitted an application for a tariff review in April of this year, but that effort has been delayed.

Ansord Hewitt, director general of OUR, said the regulator was advised that the application could be submitted by October, with a decision on any rate adjustment to be announced at the start of January. It means apart from the annual inflation adjustment and the monthly adjustments for fuel costs, consumers will see another adjustment in their electricity bills for January, if the timelines continue to hold.

If the tariff review was submitted as expected in April, the adjustments to customers’ bills would have taken place this month.

Efforts to get a comment from JPS on the matter proved futile. The All-Island Electricity Act under which the company operates is also being currently reviewed by a Parliamentary committee.

The indication comes as the JPS reports US$30.1 million ($4.67 billion) in profit over the first half of this year.

The profit was 7.1 per cent up from the same period a year ago and came as revenues grew 7.6 per cent to US$538.5 million ($83.47 billion).

That revenue was higher than the US$476 million it said would be its revenue requirement for 2023, when it last applied for a rate increase in 2019 for the five-year period up to 2024.

It then got an increase that had a bill impact of under five per cent.