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TUESDAY, 30 AUGUST 2011 21:36 PAUL ANTHONY A. ISLA / REPORTER
POWER retailer Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) has programmed P4.5 billion to fund its remaining projects for the year.
The projects are targeted to increase their system’s efficiency and reliability, Oscar Reyes, Meralco senior executive vice president and chief operating officer, told reporters.
Meralco has already spent P4 billion of the allocated P8.5-billion budget for capital projects this year, he said.
The remaining budget, according to Reyes, will be spent for substations, transformers and other capital expenditures to improve reliability and quality of service and to make the system more robust to provide 24/7 service.
Reyes said Meralco is prepared to spend P10.5 billion to P10.9 billion, but regulators approved a lower capital spending.
Despite the lower capital expenditures, the company will continue to provide reliable and uninterrupted service to its customers, the Meralco official said.
“We will prioritize capital projects for distribution service that will enhance the quality of service to our customers,” he said.
Meralco earlier said it would continue to maintain its service commitment to its customers even after the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) slashed its average distribution charge for the regulatory year 2012 to 2015.
The ERC approved a P37.2-billion capital- expenditure program for Meralco for thethird regulatory period from July 2011 to June 2015.
In the first half of the year, Betty Siy-Yap, Meralco senior vice president and chief finance officer, said the company’s consolidated net income increased by 25.6 percent to P6.091 billion from P4.851 billion during the same period last year.
Meralco’s core net income also increased by 34.7 percent to P7.822 billion in the first half of the year from P5.805 billion in the same period last year.
The increase in income was driven by adjusted distribution rate due to the implementation of the tariff adjustment for the fourth regulatory year of the second regulatory period; higher volume sold to commercial customers; and lower operating costs, Yap said.
However, consolidated sales revenues dropped by 1.9 percent to P124.8 billion in the first half of the year, as electricity sales revenues also decreased by 2.6 percent to P121.2 billion in the first half. In the first half of 2010, Meralco’s consolidated sales revenue was P127.2 billion that took into account P124.4 billion in electricity sales revenues.
Yap said nonelectricity sales revenues, on the other hand, increased by 30.9 percent to P3.6 billion in the first half of the year from P2.8 billion in the same period last year.
In terms of gigawatt-hours (GWh), Meralco sold a total of 14,781 GWh of electricity in the first half of the year, or 1.1 percent lower than the sales volume of 14.950 GWh in the same period of 2010.
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