by Ken Quintanilla

Guam - Ratepayers should expect their power bills to drop before Christmas as the Guam Power Authority officially closed its $340 million in refinanced bonds this morning. Consolidated Commission on Utilities secretary/treasurer Joey Duenas along with GPA general manager Joaquin Flores say today's bond closing helps put GPA's financial house back in order.

"So we learn to cherish how blessed we are when we get to a goal and achievement that's been realized," said Duenas. Flores added, "Guam power is now a mature electric utility municipally owned by the people of the territory of Guam and hopefully as go forward we will do other initiatives that will improve reliability and improve services and efficiency and also lower our cost to our people."

It was earlier this month when GPA successfully sold the bonds which would equate to $10 million in savings passed on to ratepayers. GEDA noted that GPA's 4.39% interest rate is the lowest in Guam's history where it received $4 billion worth of orders for the bond. The CCU will now petition the PUC by the end of the month to rollback the May 1 rate increase.