CONSTRUCTIVE suggestions should be put forward during public debate, such as in Parliament, so that all can solve problems together, government leaders said recently.

However, relevant information is sometimes unavailable to the public or is not presented in a consistent format to facilitate analysis.

A case in point is the non-fuel generating cost component of the electricity tariff, for which the Energy Market Authority had for years been providing detailed breakdowns of, on its website. But not for this quarter.

This part of the tariff is paid to electricity generating companies to cover their non-fuel expenses (such as depreciation, staff costs, etc) and profit and is estimated to cost domestic consumers nearly S$500 million [updated @ 2.10pm, Nov 28] annually.

The cost to non-domestic consumers, who use close to five times as much electricity as domestic consumers, is difficult to estimate.

The non-fuel generating cost is not insignificant in dollar terms and has trended upward since the first quarter of 2008, at an annualised rate of approximately 6 per cent.

More worrying, it increased in all but one of the eight calendar quarters ended Q3 this year, at which point it was 50 per cent higher than in Q3 2009, or an annualised increase of 22 per cent.

For this quarter, using (less detailed) information from SP Services, it is seen that the combined fuel and non-fuel components of the tariff declined 1.4 per cent even as the reference price of fuel declined 2.8 per cent.

The non-fuel cost could be estimated to have increased 1.7 per cent (or 6.9 per cent annualised), but the public cannot be certain of this.

The EMA did not say, to my previous letter "What about non-fuel cost?" (July 25), how much of the non-fuel cost goes towards the generating companies' profits. Now, I ask the EMA why it went from transparency to opacity. Will SP Services do likewise?

Without relevant information, few people can ask the right questions and fewer still can offer meaningful suggestions.