The U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, which has been in and out of recession since 2006 and is currently saddled with $72 billion in public debt, is preparing to overhaul its public power company Electric Energy Authority.

Coming up against a July deadline to approve a new budget and make what amounts to $400 million payment to the utility's investors, officials find themselves negotiating with creditors after having submited a restructuring plan that calls for investing at least $2.3 billion in the power company as well as revising the company's current rate structures.

As reported in the Associated Press, Lisa Donahue, the Electric Energy Authority's chief restructuring officer, says that whatever the approved plan ends up becoming, the people of Puerto Rico will certainly see an electric rate increase.

Electric Energy Authority has over $9 billion in debts. The new plan -- which relies upon the cooperation of residents, creditors and the government alike -- proposes the conversion of power plants so that they might be able to burn both natural gas and fuel oil, as well as the creation of private-public partnerships for the building new plants.

Pedro Pierluisi, who, in a recent letter to the New Yorker, bluntly stated his belief that Puerto Rico would only heal its economy by becoming a U.S. state, is a critic of the proposed plan. "An increase will not benefit anyone," says the 56-year-old delegate to Congress, adding that the plan would just end up harming Puerto Rico’s already struggling economy.

Officials, who have yet to publicly release the plan in its entirety, expect it will be approved by the end of June.

Economist Gustavo Velez has said that the Electric Energy Authority is a monopoly that simply cease producing electricity and become a mere distributor of power generated by other plants, saying: "They have to bring in private companies that can produce energy. ... The plants are obsolete. They are inefficient and have serious infrastructure problems, and the authority does not have the money to update them."