Browse Honduras Daily Stories

An energy analyst at the ASJ warns that Honduras's next power-rate adjustment could increase due to rising fuel prices and the country's heavy reliance on fossil-fuel generation, citing a lack of competitive bidding that has forced ENEE to rely on costly spot-market contracts.

The International Monetary Fund's board approved Honduras's fourth and fifth program reviews, unlocking a $242 million disbursement and bringing total IMF funding to $725 million of a $847 million package, though the IMF flagged missed targets on electrical utility arrears and urged faster energy-sector reform.

Honduras's human-rights committee supports the government's electricity reforms but is pressing for legal guarantees that the state-owned national power utility will not be privatized and that benefits reach all sectors, as Congress prepares to vote on the overhaul this week.

With ENEE facing a daily loss exceeding L50 million (about $2 million) and an accumulated deficit of L120 billion, civil-society groups and small-business leaders are urging lawmakers to approve energy reforms that would restructure the state utility into separate generation, transmission, and distribution units.

Lawmakers will hold special sessions on June 30 and July 1 to debate and vote on government-backed reforms to restructure state utility ENEE, with Congress president Tomás Zambrano stressing that privatization is off the table.

Alexander Godoy, a STENEE union representative, says a review of Honduras's electricity subsidy aims to ensure benefits reach only low-income families while eliminating aid to vacation homes and vacant properties, allowing state utility ENEE to strengthen its finances and reduce costs.

The National Congress could convene next week to approve reforms to overhaul Honduras's troubled state electricity utility ENEE, with backers claiming support from 65+ lawmakers and backing from international lenders seeking to stabilize the company's finances and reduce nationwide blackouts.

Gerardo Salgado, an adviser to Congress's Energy Commission, also serves on the board of the Honduran Renewable Energy Association, which is pushing Congress to include microgrids and macrogrids in the upcoming electricity-sector reform—provisions not in the commission's original draft but potentially to be added during final debate.

Former national power company manager Salomón Ordóñez cautioned that Honduras's largest hydroelectric dam, El Cajón, requires steady funding and emergency spare parts to avoid costly thermal-power substitution, and urged against privatizing generation and transmission.

The opposition Partido Libre warns that proposed reforms to Honduras's electrical system would lead to the privatization of the state utility ENEE and threaten its existence.

The director of ENEE's social development fund announced a goal of 500 rural electrification projects nationwide in 2026, with more than 60 already profiled for contracting to reach communities the official said have been neglected for years.

Congress says it has secured the 65 votes needed to approve electricity-sector reforms aimed at modernizing the system and addressing ENEE's mounting losses—about 1.5 billion lempiras monthly—while rejecting opposition claims the measures would privatize the state utility.

Honduras's largest power plant, El Cajón, which supplies about 30% of the nation's electricity, is at risk of forced shutdowns due to aging equipment past its useful life and delays in purchasing critical replacement parts, engineers warn.

Leonardo Deras, a commissioner at electricity regulator CREE, warned that state utility ENEE is losing 1.3 billion lempiras (about $52 million) a month and that, without action, losses could reach 150,000 million lempiras (about $6 billion) in coming years.

ENEE has scheduled maintenance outages on June 23 affecting La Guama and surrounding towns (8:30 AM–4:30 PM), San Pedro Sula neighborhoods (8:45 AM–2:45 PM), and Juticalpa and much of Olancho (8:00 AM–4:00 PM).

Attorney Omar Menjívar argues that a bipartisan electrical-sector reform advancing in Congress would leave the state-owned utility ENEE intact but progressively transfer control of power service delivery to private companies, citing the precedent of Hondutel's decline after losing core telecom functions to private providers.

The Liberal Party's Congress members say they secured a clause prohibiting direct and indirect privatization of Honduras's national electricity utility, though they continue to raise concerns about sector competition, tariff reduction, energy theft, and the company's debt relief plan.

A study by the Honduran private-sector council found that blackouts and electrical interruptions cost businesses approximately L1.2 billion (about $48 million) a year, with small firms hit hardest, as the government pushes energy-sector reforms.

Liberal Party congressman Carlos Umaña said the party will not support a proposed privatization of the state power company ENEE and rejected the presidential designate's framing of the opposition's role as a junior governing partner.

ENEE has scheduled power cuts on Sunday, June 21 in multiple zones across Honduras; the utility's website details specific times and affected areas.

Departments in western Honduras including Ocotepeque and Copán have suffered over 9,900 minutes without electricity in the first six months of 2026, blamed on aging infrastructure over 40 years old; ENEE says it will upgrade substations and trim vegetation to reduce outages.

The president of Honduras's renewable energy association said Friday that private generators have no intention to seize state electricity company ENEE assets and are focused on their own projects within reformed power-sector regulations.

Residents in Santa Bárbara, Atlántida, and Lempira are protesting recurring blackouts lasting up to three days, citing damage to appliances, food spoilage, and lack of official communication from the national power utility ENEE.

ENEE manager Guillermo Peña cited insufficient investment and maintenance of the electricity grid as the root cause of Honduras's recurring power outages.

The Tegucigalpa Chamber of Commerce called for structural reforms to Honduras's electricity system, saying chronic outages and service failures at the state utility ENEE are harming businesses and threatening the country's competitiveness.

Edgar Aguilar, an energy analyst at the ASJ (Foundation for the Study of Applied Law), says the National Congress's failure to advance an energy reform bill poses a direct fiscal risk to Honduras as the state utility ENEE continues to post multimillion-lempira losses.

The National Electric Company's manager said ongoing blackouts across western Honduras stem from system instability rooted in insufficient investment and maintenance over time.

The state power utility ENEE will cut electricity to neighborhoods across El Paraíso, Santa Bárbara, Cortés, and Yoro on July 1 for scheduled maintenance, with outages scheduled for various windows throughout the day.

ENEE has announced scheduled power cuts on Sunday, June 28, across multiple zones in Honduras for maintenance work.

A banking and finance expert says reforming Honduras's electric system could help recover over 16 billion lempiras ($640 million) in losses and reduce the fiscal burden on the national power company, which has weakened since 1990.