The government believes that the decision to subsidize the FEA rates of about 22,000 bill payers who use 75 units of electricity or less is fair as these low end consumers need to be assisted.

The major change for assistance for household customers and lifeline customers is that previously FEA used to subsidize the rates of all customers who used 130 units of electricity or less.

These lifeline customers used to pay 17.2 cents are unit while 17 cents was paid by the FEA.

This resulted in FEA providing the service at a loss.

Now FEA will not provide the subsidy as the government will pay FEA the market rate for all customers who use 75 units or less.

This would mean that the lifeline bill payers will still pay 17.2 cents a unit but the remaining 17 cents will be paid by the government.

The change is that those who use more than 75 units will now pay rates of 34 cents a unit.

Commerce Minister, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said the lifeline in terms of subsidizing electricity rates now set is still higher than the international benchmark.