The poor planning of the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) is affecting the country’s businesses. ICE had announced that this week there would be blackouts starting Monday. This means that businesses had to prepare in advance and incur costs to deal with the situation. However, the institution announced yesterday that there would be no power outages for today (Monday) and tomorrow.
Mauricio Rodríguez, president of CACORE, pointed out that the lack of planning and anticipation regarding the hours in which the service will not be provided and whether it will finally be the whole week or not, affects business owners financially.
The Costa Rican Chamber of Industries stated that the planning to keep an industry operating without electricity requires time and additional costs.
For example, a restaurant preparing to continue operating with a power outage can have a very significant cost, according to the Costa Rican Chamber of Restaurants (CACORE). Renting a plant to keep a facility running in the event of a power outage can cost up to $1,000 per day for a restaurant.
“We are not talking about an insignificant amount of money. We are unable to plan ahead, and we can’t lose sales. But in the end, instead of losing money because we’re unable to operate, we’re going to lose it spending on something that we are not going to need,” assured the president.
Those who did not invest in plant rental are suffering losses due to the uncertainty as to whether or not there will be power outages. Many businesses also opted to close their doors in the event that the electricity supply is cut off, and while being able to operate is a relief, they’re still not able to plan ahead particularly when it comes to personnel and inventory.
“This uncertainty is disrespectful to the productive sector. The problem is that we already have members who have invested in plants and other resources,” stated Rodríguez.
The country’s productive sector emphasized the need to implement measures so that this situation doesn’t happen again, since electricity cuts and uncertainty significantly harm the industry.
