AER - Letter to Essential Energy - Opex productivity growth forecast review final decision - 7 March 2019

On 8 March 2019, we published our final decision paper for our operating expenditure productivity growth forecast review. We decided that a 0.5 per cent annual operating expenditure productivity growth rate reflects a reasonable forecast of the productivity growth a prudent and efficient distributor can make.

As flagged in our draft and final decision papers for that review, we propose to adopt this operating expenditure productivity growth forecast when making our final decision for Essential Energy's 2019-24 distribution determination. We have written to Essential Energy about the impact of our productivity growth decision on our assessment of its revised opex proposal.