Caribbean & Central America - February 2011 (ISSN 1741-4458)

On 14 February the government announced that it would hold tenders to double the country's electricity generation capacity. The tenders for 800MW of generating capacity are due to come on stream by 2015.

Carlos Colom, the president of Comisión Nacional de Energí­a Eléctrica (CNEE), claimed that no previous government had ever tried anything as ambitious.

Colom said that 60% of the new capacity would be in the form of renewable energy. He added that companies from the US, Europe and South America had expressed an interest in taking part in the tender. Colom expected the tender to close this October and that the winners would have completed their projects to deliver the new power schemes by 2015. Currently 80% of the country's electricity is generated by the state-owned Instituto Nacional de Electrificación and the Empresa Eléctrica. They provide a total of 653MW in generating capacity. The private sector provides 170MW in generating capacity.

Food imports: The government has waived tariffs on 25,000t of wheat flour imports from the US in an effort to prevent food prices surging uncontrollably. Since the beginning of 2011 flour prices have increased by 18%, pushing up bread prices. At the beginning of February the government waived tariffs on imports of 82,000t of maize from Mexico. This move was also designed to prevent the price of maize products rising. Maize prices jumped by 15% in the final week of January as traders feared shortages.

Inflation: In January the consumer prices index rose by 0.82% bringing the lagging 12 month rate to 4.9%.