Napocor budget to sustain off-grid areas assured

Business World Onine
Posted on November 21, 2011 10:48:47 PM


STATE-OWNED National Power Corp. (Napocor) is assured of its supplemental budget to sustain electricity for off-grid areas as it awaits Senate decision following a recent Congress approval, the Energy chief said yesterday on the sidelines of a business forum.
This comes as the Energy department begins studies to privatize two-fifths of the total capacity needed by small power utility group (SPUG) areas in a bid to cut down public costs to provide electricity in far-flung regions.
“The supplemental budget was already endorsed by the Congress, and the Senate assured the [Energy] department that they would pass it as well,” Energy Secretary Jose Rene D. Almendras told reporters on the sidelines of the Philippines-South Korea Business Forum held at the Manila Hotel.
The Budget department in September already released P1.62 billion to the Napocor to stem intermittent power outages in remote areas.
The said funding comes on top of the P3.6 billion granted to the public firm earlier this year as reimbursement for the maintenance of the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant.
Other sources of income for powering SPUG areas include the universal charge for missionary electrification (UCME) paid by consumers at a rate of P0.11 per kilowatt-hour (kWh).
Napocor said last month that it wanted to file for additional UCME on top of the P0.709/kWh approved by the Energy Regulatory Commission in August to help pay for its P15-billion fund requirement for 2012.
To keep power costs from rising as well, the Energy department is expected to resolve power crises in distant rural areas.
“We are meeting next week to discuss gas generation for 2012, and we have identified four areas whose operations can be privatized,” Mr. Almendras said.
“This constitutes 40% of the power generated for SPUG areas,” he added, naming three of the four prospects as Palawan, Masbate and Mindoro.
Napocor, through SPUG, manages and operates 157 power utilities in off-grid areas with a combined capacity of 200 megawatts.
These areas include: Batangas, Marinduque, Quezon, Catanduanes, Albay, Romblon, Batanes, Cagayan, Aurora, Apayao, Kalinga, Isabela, Camarines Sur, Masbate, Cebu, Siquijor, Antique, Iloilo, Leyte, Biliran, Samar, Basilan, Sulu, Dinagat, Sultan Kudarat, Davao, Surigao del Norte, Zamboanga and Tawi-Tawi.