Local electricity authorities are trying to encourage consumers to save on electricity by lending the funds for investment in energy saving schemes.
A proposal to set up an Rs 30 mn fund to finance energy saving efforts was pitched to the private sector by the Energy Conservation Fund (ECF) on Thursday.
“At the moment industries don’t have the reserve capital to invest in new technology for energy saving purposes but with the fund they can,” says Mr Harsha Wickramasinghe, Director Projects at ECF.
The money for the fund will come through a soft loan from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) and will finance energy saving schemes under seven-year concessionary loans.
But the proposal met with a lukewarm reception from the local private sector on Thursday with industries saying the lending rate to commercial and industrial enterprises was too high.
Under the proposed financing scheme, the end user lending rate to businesses will be about 8.
84 percent.
The EC