The electricity industry marked the end of an era today, with the final Western Power Corporation annual report being tabled by the Minister for Energy and revealing a profit well below expectations.
The electricity industry marked the end of an era today, with the final Western Power Corporation Annual Report being tabled by the Minister for Energy and revealing a profit well below expectations.
The report records a net after-tax profit of $92.9million - $17.3million below budget.
Mr Logan said the budget variance was a result of increased fuel costs and labour and materials expenditure, which were partly offset by higher than expected revenue from electricity sales and capital contributions.
He said higher expenditures on inspections, vegetation clearing, follow-up maintenance, business transformation costs and emergency response work contributed to the higher labour and materials costs.
The Minister said the report outlined the achievements of the corporation over the nine months to March 31, including the preparation for the new wholesale energy market, the restructuring of coal supply contracts and the establishment of arrangements for the construction of a new base load power station.
Mr Logan said the report included the unqualified independent audit report of the Auditor General.
"However, the Auditor General has previously drawn my attention to a number of matters relating to redundancies and termination payments made to a handful of individuals," he said.
"The concerns relate to how these payments were calculated and the lack of supportive documentation.
"Having already questioned Western Power Corporation on a number of occasions on the arrangements to accommodate employees and the need to avoid redundancy situations as part of the disaggregation process, I sought additional information in response to the Auditor General's concerns.
"This information has been provided and I have written back to the Auditor General drawing his attention to some of the documentation. I have asked him to advise me of the outcome of any further consideration by him of these termination issues."
Mr Logan said he would work to ensure that similar concerns were not raised in respect to the new energy corporations.
"I will be writing to each of the new corporations and asking them to review and address the matters raised by the Auditor General and related issues," he said
The new corporations which have replaced the integrated Western Power Corporation -Verve Energy (generation), Synergy (retail), Western Power (networks) and Horizon Power (regional) - will submit their annual reports for the three months to June 2006 by the end of September.
