A meeting with owners of companies, factories and various commercial and service activities was held at Misrata Chamber of Commerce today to protest the increase of the electricity tariff on commercial activities of all kinds.
During this meeting, headed by the Chamber’s Chairman Fathi Al-Amin Al-Turki, the attendees discussed the correspondence issued by the Chairman of the General Electricity Company of Libya (GECOL), which stipulates the imposition of an increase in the electricity tariff.
The meeting discussed the most important measures that the meeting will take towards this matter, which has consequences for the simple citizen.
During this meeting, the attendees also stressed the preparation of grievance memoranda and directing them to all relevant authorities to reconsider these instructions and find a quick solution towards them, and in the event of non-response from the competent authorities, the necessary procedures to escalated the response to the grievances.
It will be recalled that following a Libyan social media outcry based on the erroneous news that the state General Electricity Company of Libya (GECOL) was raising all electricity prices at peak hours this summer, GECOL clarified last Thursday (24 April) that this will only apply to high-consumption commercial entities.
It explained that the high tariff of LD 1 per kilowatt-hour from 1 pm to midnight, from 15/5/2025 to 1/9/2025, will apply exclusively to consumers who exceed half a Megawatt (0.5 Megawatts) of consumption. Before 1 pm and after midnight, the tariff will be LD 0.5 per kilowatt-hour.
The company confirmed that this price amendment does not include homes and small commercial premises.
GECOL said it had implemented this measure several years ago, during the peak summer periods, as a special procedure based on its responsibility to provide the best services to citizens.
To paraphrase what GECOL is saying, without using the word ‘‘power cuts” or blackouts”: GECOL wants to mitigate the frequent and long power cuts / blackouts that used occur across the country – that current Tripoli Prime Minister, Abd Alhamid Aldabaiba, had inherited when he first took office.
The company stressed in its statement that “the average citizen will not be affected by any increase in pricing,” calling on the media and the public to investigate accurately and obtain information from official sources, stressing its continuation of awareness programmes aimed at spreading the culture of rationalisation and achieving optimal use of energy.
However, commercial users affiliated to Misrata Chamber of Commerce are not happy about this increased tariff and plan to resist its implementation through various means of protest.
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Increased summer peak-time electricity prices only for high consumption commercial entities: GECOL
