Deregulation in the national electricity market of Singapore: competition and efficiency

The National Electricity Market of Singapore (NEMS) is a horizontally unbundled electricity market under an industry regulator. It sustains competition and regulation in its market structure. Its deregulation reform has started in 1995, and generation is fully open to competition and wholesale and retail markets are gradually being opened to competition. At the end of 2003 the contestable market covers 75 percent of the total electricity demand and is expected to increase as more consumers become contestable in 2004. Concentration measures like CS4 and the HHI show that the generation market of the NEMS is highly concentrated but the market has more than effective numbers of competitors. The NEMS has seen a 9.5 percent reduction of the electricity tariff during 2002/2003 and it remains to be seen whether the benefits continue to come as the NEMS moves to a full competitive market.