(The Philippine Star) | Updated October 12, 2016 - 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines –
Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian is seeking the immediate passage of a bill, which seeks
to lower electricity rates by as much as 15.67 centavos per kilowatt hour
through the reduction of charges passed on to consumers by power companies.
Senate Bill 1188, or
the proposed “Recoverable System Loss Act,” lowers the system loss cap – the
maximum charge that can be passed on to consumers to compensate
for electricity lost in the distribution system from the receiving point
of private distribution utilities and electric cooperatives to the consumer’s
metering point – from 8.5 percent to five percent for distribution utilities,
and from 13 percent to 10 percent for electric cooperatives.
The bill also seeks to
prohibit electricity distributors from passing on other charges to consumers:
non-technical system losses caused by electricity theft or pilferage, and the
electricity company’s own power expenses.
“Consumers should not
be made to pay for what is ultimately the responsibility of distribution
utilities and electric cooperatives. It is time for us to prioritize the
welfare of Filipino households over the interests of power sector insiders,”
said Gatchalian, the bill’s author and chairman of the Senate committee on
energy.
Additionally, the bill
provides for a value-added tax (VAT) exemption for system loss charges.
If passed into law,
Gatchalian estimates consumers could save as much as P386 million per month in
electricity costs.
In a related
development, Sen. Loren Legarda is pushing for full electrification of all
barangays, sitios and households through funding in the national budget as she
welcomed the European Union’s (EU) support for the Philippines’ rural
electrification targets.
Legarda, chair of the
Senate committee on finance, said the country’s electrification profile showed
89 percent of households in Luzon have power, 79 percent in the Visayas, and a
very low 56 percent in Mindanao.
Urban electrification
stood at 94 percent, while rural electrification in the country stood at a low
of 73 percent, she said.
She noted most of those
who have no access to electricity primarily live in the rural areas, which
account for 4.4 million households living in remote areas as well as in the
outskirts of Metro Manila and Davao.
“We want these
statistics to reach 100 percent by 2017 or in the next two years, definitely
before the 2020 original target. But we do not want just statistics, we must
ensure that indeed all barangays, sitios and households in the country are
electrified,” she at the 4th EU-Philippine meeting of Access to Sustainable
Energy Programme (ASEP) last week.
She said she will look
into how much funding assistance is available from foreign sources and how much
the government can provide as counterpart under the General Appropriations Act
(GAA) so that the country will not need to wait until 2020 to achieve full
electrification.
Through ASEP, the EU
has allocated a grant of over P3 billion to assist the Philippines to meet its
rural electrification targets by means of renewable energy and to promote
energy efficiency.
The senator said
electrification goals would need to be aligned with a low-carbon objective in
the energy sector.
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