posted March 28, 2016 at 11:05 pm by Alena
Mae S. Flores
The Semiconductor & Electronics
Industries in the Philippines Foundation Inc. reiterated a call to the Energy
Regulatory Commission to clarify certain issues under the proposed rules on
retail competition and open access.
Seipi, in a series of letters to
ERC, sought for a “smooth transition” in the wake of the forthcoming
implementation of retail competition and open access by June 2016.
It also urged the regulator to
review the impact of excluding distribution utilities and retail electricity
suppliers from delivering to the contestable market.
Seipi is the leading organization of
foreign and Filipino semiconductor and electronics companies in the
Philippines, allied industries and the academe.
The industry accounts for 49 percent
of the total Philippine exports, directly employing 351,387 operators and
technicians and has invested a total of P80.783 billion.
The group has sought clarification
“whether the life of the existing preferential rate contracts will still be
observed even after the deadline of mandatory contestability, or whether will
these contracts be rescinded.”
ERC wants the remaining contestable
customers or customers to switch to the retail electricity suppliers by June,
which is also the start of the voluntary implementation of the 750-0kilowatt
threshold of open access.
Retail electricity suppliers refer
to any person or entity authorized by the ERC to sell, broker, market or
aggregate electricity to end users in the contestable market.
Contestable customers are
electricity end users who are given the choice to choose their supplier of
electricity.
“The industry is very supportive of
the country’s shift to retail competition and open access... We would just like
to highlight the need of facilitating a smooth transition, so as not to burden
the companies with the volume of arrangements that need to be settled,” Seipi
president Dan Lachica, who signed the letters, said.
The group noted ERC’s proposed rules
preventing a distribution utility from supplying electricity to the contestable
market, unless the supply is made in its capacity as supplier of last resort.
ERC’s proposed rules released in
November 2015 further stated that the distribution utilities were enjoined to
wind down their respective supply businesses, meaning no local retail
electricity supplier should be allowed to act as such by June 26, 2016.
Seipi expressed concern over the
possible outcome of the ERC ruling in terms of having less retail electricity
supplies to choose from.
“With less suppliers in the market,
this could very well pose the risk of having lower bargaining power during
supply contract negotiations,” it said.
It added that the draft rules did
not explain what would happen to the existing contracts of the contrastable
customers with local retail electricity suppliers that have already been
executed.
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