Business Mirror
Published on Thursday, 11 April 2013 20:46 Written by Manuel T. Cayon | Mindanao Bureau Chief
DAVAO CITY—Mindanao is bleeding from its rotating blackouts, which have cost one growth area alone—Soccsksargen—an average of P100 million a month. Soccsksargen groups South Cotabato, Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Sarangani and General Santos City.
Rey Billena, a business chamber leader in this south-central Mindanao growth area, said the bigger losses were incurred by seven canning factories and deep-sea fishing operators in General Santos City, the country’s reputed tuna capital, and adjacent South Cotabato.
These losses were recorded in March and April, when the blackouts lasted four to seven hours daily. In January and February, the power outages were felt two to four hours daily.
More diesel to run generator sets of the canneries and other food-processing factories, shopping malls and plantations cost these businesses P2 million a day.
Billena said one cannery alone lost P200,000 to P300,000 in wages for workers who were forced to call a day off due to the blackouts.
“The losses amounted to a total of P8 million to P10 million per cannery per month,” he added. “And there are seven canning factories here.”
His own ice-cream plant loses at least P500,000 a month as a result of the blackouts, Billena told the BusinessMirror in a phone interview from his office in General Santos City.
He said some members of his business chamber had been intending to close shop because of the blackouts.
The Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA), the southern island’s socioeconomic planning unit, has confirmed the losses of business establishments in Soccsksargen but its public affairs and international investment chief, Romeo Montenegro, said they were yet to come up with final estimates.
The losses in the Soccsksargen and Zamboanga areas were heavier, Romero added, because the outages there were worsened by “lack of reserve and back-up power generation sources.”
Billena said the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry in their meeting in General Santos City on Friday “has expressed concern over our predicament.”
Stable energy supply to Soccsksargen is expected by October 2015, when a 200-megawatt (MW)coal plant of Conal Holdings Inc. in Maasim, Sarangani, begins operating.
Another 300 MW are expected from an Aboitiz project in Davao City that would operate also by that year but the MinDA said even with the additional 500 MW from it and the Conal plant, “we would [still] be operating without a comfortable reserve power.”
Mindanao would need at least 100 MW of power annually to stabilize the current shortfall of as much as 200 MW and to meet the projected annual growth rate of 4.9 percent.
During the last 11 years, it was able to put up generation projects that churned out only 200 MW.
Bulk of the Mindanao grid supply comes from the 53 percent of hydroelectric power from the six power-generating plants in the Agus River, which cuts across the two Lanao provinces; and the Pulangi IV hydroelectric power plant in Maramag, Bukidnon.
The Mindanao Business Council, which groups the 44 local business chambers and 11 major industry sectors, backed the MinDA in persuading President Aquino to stop the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. from selling some Mindanao power plants at public auction.
In 2010 the government installed the Interruptible Load Program under which big establishments and factories were asked to use their own generators during peak hours of power usage, so that power-distribution companies and electric cooperatives would have extra megawatts to be made available to other areas or industries that needed them in those hours.
In Mindanao the peak hours are from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. source
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