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By KELIN DILLON

Mexico’s state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) reportedly loses some 50 billion pesos per year in electricity profits due to thievery in the form of meter manipulation and illicit hanging cables.

The Secretariat of Energy (Sener) has made note of some 5.77 million meters across the country that need updating within the next five years to bring them up to regulatory standards and prevent further manipulation, as well as a bevy of rammed transmission lines that have been hijacked to illegally provide energy to areas throughout Mexico that must be fixed.

According to the Analysis of Electricity Sector Rates by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Cepal), Mexico experiences a loss of 17 percent of its electricity throughout the nation, more than double the 8 percent average internationally.

This year, the CFE aims to reduce thefts to 8.9 percent, a rate more on par with other countries, and has allocated 8.8 billion pesos in budget to work on decreasing these losses.