ENERGY Regulation Board board chairperson Reynolds Bowa says the board’s decision to commence reviewing fuel prices monthly is meant to promote transparency in process.

In an interview, Bowa said not holding monthly price reviews had become a major challenge.

“You might recall that when we did a price review, the last price review, I think it was the 19th of December, something like that. At that time, we said that one of the problems that had caused such a significant change in the pricing was that the period between price reviews was too long. We hadn’t reviewed prices up to that point, the last price review had been two years before. Many things had changed, so what we are trying to do is not have such a problem where we don’t review for a long time and then when we review, the prices increase significantly. So at that point when we were announcing that price increase, we also announced that from now on, going forward the price will be reviewed every month,” he said.

He said no significant change was expected in the price of fuel.

“Depending on which direction the fundamentals moved, the review can be an upward adjustment in price or price remaining the same or a reduction in price. Either one of those three things can happen but what is significant is that because the last review only happened a month before, any change in the price is not expected to be very significant. It just represents a change from an old system that didn’t serve us very well to a new system where we will be looking at the price every month,” said Bowa.

“We will be making an announcement every month whether there has been a change or no change, it doesn’t matter, so that the public knows that the prices reviewed on this day every month, they will be looking forward to hearing if there is a change? Is there no change? Is it an increase? Is it a reduction? And we will be completely transparent about how we will calculate the price, so that people can see what exactly we are doing. But that is the idea, we announced it in December, it is starting in January and it will continue every month going forward. So we will tell you in advance, we will give you a calendar, so everybody will know the date on which these things will be announced. It will be announced every month regularly without fail going forward. So the idea is not because we want to increase the price, no! We want to move to a system that is more transparent, people (should) know when the price review happens, they can expect it, they can plan for it.”