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PCCI calls on P-noy gov't to stop escalating power rates; start building baseload plants |
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Build urgently needed power plants to stop rotating brownouts in Mindanao and avert similar outages in Luzon this coming summer.
At the same time, put a brake to escalating power rate increases.
This was the call made by the country's biggest business organization to the Aquino government in a position paper obtained by the PHILEXPORT News and Features the other day.
To stop escalating power rates that have made electricity in the Philippines the most expensive in Asia, PCCI suggested that the government may start by suspending anything unnecessary and extraneous program that further add cost to electric power.
"Mindanao is already in trouble, with rotating black outs from two the four hours a day," pointed out Jose Alejandro, head of the PCCI energy committee. He said that two power plants in the southern region that are only beginning to be built will be ready for use by 2014 to 2015.
"Luzon needs 1,200 megawatts to escape the same crisis in Mindanao," Alejandro said. And yet, only 600 megawatts from GM Power will be connected to the grid by 2013. Not a single baseload plant has been built in Luzon in the last 12 years.
The premier business organization revealed that several petitions for rate increases being tackled by heard by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC). If approved, these will add another 95 centavos per kilowatt'hour to the bill of consumers that are already saddled to the highest electricity rates in Asia.
The business chamber said that for every centavo per kilowatt/hour increase, the power companies take away P263 milion a year from the dining tables of the poorest consumers, another P118 million from the food and clothing budget of the ordinary housewife and another P341 million from business and industry.
"This is why the Philippines is rated very low in competitiveness and why the Private-Public Partnership (PPP) program and its desired drawing effects (in investments and new jobs) would have low probability of success," the chamber pointed out.
Pending petitions for power rate hikes have been filed with the ERC, two by PSALM seeking added rates totaling 46 centavos per kilowatt/hour, 27 centavos sought by the National Power Corporation, and another eight centavos asked by the Manila Electric Company.
On top of these, developers of renewable energy that got a law passed for all consumers to subside their development costs and profits are asking the ERC to approve a 12 centavo per kilowatt hour mark up for the next 20 years.
In all, these will add up close to one peso per kilowatt/hour rate hikes that could happen any day that ERC gives its nod to those petitions. -- Abe P. Belena, PHILEXPORT News and Features
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