By
Lenie Lectura - October 4, 2017
A top official of the
Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) said the utility firm “remains hopeful” that
regulators will immediately act and approve soon its seven power-supply
agreement (PSA) applications.
“We still remain
hopeful. We still expect them to deliver…what they promised,” Meralco President
Oscar Reyes said.
Reyes was referring to
the commitment made by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to Congress in
July that it would try to render a decision on the pending PSA
applications in three months. That schedule ended early this week.
Three months later the
ERC has yet to act on the PSA applications of Meralco.
The ERC, for its part,
assured electricity consumers that the Meralco PSA applications are being
evaluated to ensure that only just and reasonable costs shall be included in
the electric bill.
“We are carefully
scrutinizing each of the cost components in the Meralco PSA applications,” ERC
Officer in Charge Alfredo J. Non said. “That is why the final approval of these
applications have been taking some time.”
Under Section 45 of the
Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001, the ERC is mandated to review
bilateral power-supply contracts entered into by distribution utilities.
The ERC’s PSA approval
entails a comprehensive process, which includes the conduct of the hearing,
filing of formal offer of evidence, technical evaluation, commission
deliberation and issuance of a decision.
The ERC further
explained that the grant of provisional or even a final approval to just one
Meralco PSA application should not be equated to all PSAs approval as applied
by the applicants.
The rates and
conditions that were provisionally approved are not necessarily the same rates
and conditions in the final approval or decision of the case, said the agency.
More often than not,
the final rates have been lower. The agency also clarified that the Provisional
Authority granted to Panay Energy Development Corp. in July last year was
necessitated in view of the frequent yellow-alert status of power reserves at
that time.
“We must remember that
stable supply of power is among the anchors of our economy,” Non said. “We
granted the provisional approval because it will be more beneficial to the
consuming public, and the country as a whole, to have a continuing stable power
supply than have rotating brownouts, which is more damaging to the economy.”
The agency
earlier denied the petitions of some individuals who want to intervene in
the ongoing hearings mainly due to technicality.
According to the
advocacy group Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC), the ERC dismissed the joint
Petition for Intervention filed by several allied groups due to technical
grounds: being filed out of time.
On October 2, members
of the advocacy group Power for People Coalition filed their motion for
reconsideration in their recently denied petitions, the FDC said in a
statement.
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