Dear readers, how time flies! Two years ago, I signed up for an Open Electricity plan package to purchase electricity from one of the open market retailers, after more than a year of hesitation to get onboarded (due to the perceived hassle of switching to and opening up new accounts).
I bought the plan which had a 23% discounted off the regulated tariff as versus fixed price packages. Since then, never did the open electricity market expect the price fluctuations that hit the electricity market last year, so much so that there are currently no longer any discounts-off-tariff price packages on the open electricity markets.
Nevermind, the developments on the open electricity market, I am grateful that I have at least save quite a decent sum of monies over the last two years, paying for electricity at a good discount off the regulated tariff. Now that my electricity package is up for renewal, I have recently re-contracted with my open electricity retailer for a, no surprise, fixed price package that offers a fixed price inclusive of GST during the contractual period.
During the re-contracting process, the fixed price inclusive of GST is confusing. I only understood from the fine print in the fact sheet that the GST-inclusive price will be adjusted come 2023 with the raising of GST from 7% to 8% for the one-year contract. But what is even more confusing is the two-year contract. On the fact sheet, it was only stated to the effect that the GST-inclusive price will be adjusted to a particular amount w.e.f 1 Jan 2023. For a two-year plan. what was left not mentioned was the GST-inclusive price w.e.f 1 Jan 2024 when GST would have been raised to 9%. Nevertheless, there were clauses in the recontract agreement that mentioned that the retailer would be able to adjust GST-prices based on prevailing GST rates.
To be honest, my re-contracting now is rooted in preventing the hassle of switching back to Singapore Power (SP) again. There is no longer any reason for saving since the plan I bought and which are available to consumers are fixed price plans and no longer any discount-off-tariff packages. That said, my recontracting at fixed plan is also a hedge against possible price increase of the regulated tariff. On the converse, if the regulated tariff is below my recontract price then I will be in fact paying off with my open electricity plans!
My advice for potential subscribers would be to stick to SP since the rates paidable are at the regulated tariff, nothing more, and nothing less. For subscribers recontracting with an Open Market retailer, my suggestion is to secure a one-year price package first and see how the regulated tariffs evolve from there.