THE House panel on energy on Tuesday endorsed extending the power subsidy to low-income consumers provided by the Electric Power Industry Reform Act for another 10 years.
Batanes Rep. Henedina Abad, who heads the committee, said the measure would cost the government P4 billion a year, or P40 billion over the next 10 years, to subsidize the cost of electricity to poor families.
“The level of subsidy to distribution utilities range from 10 to 35 kilowatt hours, and from our computations, that translates to P2 per kilowatt hour subsidy for ‘lifeline users’ and for other distribution utilities like electric cooperatives,” Abad told reporters after a committee hearing Tuesday.
Abad, wife of Budget Secretary Florencio Butch Abad, said the lifeline rate would cost about P4 billion each year for households consuming power from Manila Electric Co. along the Luzon grid alone.
Abad, citing data from the Social Welfare Department, said the amount would be extended to about 2.5 million poor families out of Meralco’s total 5 million household consumers.
She said the poor families consuming power from the electric cooperatives in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao would likely get less than P2 per kilowatt hour, or less than P3.74 each month, from the power subsidy, which expires on June 26.
“We are extending it for another 10 years,” Abad said.
The law envisioned a “lifeline rate” to protect poor consumers from hefty power-rate increases when it was passed in 2001.
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