| DIE HARD III |
 |
| Herman Tiu Laurel |
02/27/2012
Much as this space would like to tackle
the myriad other issues bedeviling the nation, we are constantly dragged
back to the electricity or power plunder that continues to ravage this
country to this day. We have repeatedly highlighted the anomalous fact
of the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management (Psalm) Corp. and
National Power Corp. (Napocor) debt staying at $18 billion despite over
10 years and almost 90 percent of the state’s power assets being “sold
off” to the private sector since the start of the power privatization
program under the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) of 2001. It
is as if money from the sales vanished into thin air.
Last week,
one clue was given by the state agency that manages these assets. When
its top honcho, Emmanuel Ledesma Jr., said, “Psalm is yet to collect
$9.99 billion in additional proceeds from the transfer of IPP
(independent power producer) contracts to private administrators as of
September 2011,” what it says is that taxpayers and power consumers are
to be charged what the IPPs should have paid for but didn’t.
As
for the other half of that $18-billion debt, Ledesma claims it as “$8.44
billion in debts assumed from” Napocor. Now wasn’t the privatization
of Napocor assets supposed to cover all these? Where did proceeds from
the sale of diesel-fired to hydroelectric and geothermal power plants
go? How about the latest $4-billion privatization of the TransCo (the
erstwhile state-owned transmission grid) to the private sector operator,
National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP), that has also not been
collected after two years?
In June 2011, it was reported that
“government may use the receivables from the concession contract of the
NGCP” on the pretext that “selling the receivables ahead of the
scheduled payment of NGCP may help in the efforts to reduce the
universal charge (UC).”
Wait a minute: TransCo was earning P18
billion a year when it was sold off; now it’s not even paid while the
NGCP is already earning; hence, we now even have to rediscount the
receivables? What name can you give to such a deal if not “historic
swindle?”
I am just aghast at the magnitude of this scam and the
impunity with which it continues to be perpetrated before the eyes of 95
million Filipinos. With the silent blessings of four Edsa
administrations (Cory Aquino, Fidel Ramos, Gloria Arroyo, and now
PeNoy), this national swindle rages on because of the silent consent of
the entire Senate and Lower House of Congress, in collaboration with all
government electricity agencies — from Psalm to the Energy Regulatory
Commission (ERC).
What is the power behind these power plunderers
that all government institutions are cowed into compliance, even as we
ordinary folk see their dictates as an unconscionable swindle?
What
are we, the people of this nation, to do when our supposed
representatives in government stand idly by as our pockets are looted
and our economy is systematically laid to waste by the garrote of high
electricity prices and a progressively failing economy over years and
years of power plunder?
The latest statements of the Psalm chief
only reveal how helpless government authorities really are in the face
of the IPPs and power plunderer-privateers. Instead of pressing for
these companies to pay up what are clearly debt obligations to
government and the Filipino people, our supposed leaders continue to
find ways on how to unburden these companies — to the detriment of the
public.
With deceitful intent, Psalm has been trying to pass on
these debts of the privateers via piecemeal transfers: P140 billion to
be paid from the national budget and assumed by taxpayers; P0.39 per
kilowatt-hour (kWh) as UC, shouldered again by power consumers over 20
years; with another bulk to be charged to Malampaya’s earnings; and only
God knows what else.
If they were to pass these on as one lump
sum to each electricity bill, it would amount to an additional P5/kWh
over 20 years, which means up to 35 percent of added cost to each power
consumer, who will fork out over P100 billion in power payments
annually.
Congress has not approved such piecemeal schemes just
yet because the ploy is too blatantly oppressive and dishonest; but it
has done nothing to resolve the power plunder for the nation’s welfare
either.
Malacañang, for its part, has only played deaf and dumb to
the issue and the pleas of all sectors of society. At the rate the
situation is developing, it is apparent that government has been made
inutile, with the implication being that, at some point, all these debts
will finally be transferred to us when we are at our most vulnerable —
perhaps under another “revolutionary government” dictatorship a la Cory —
so that the IPPs and power plunderers will never be made to pay the $18
billion anymore, thanks to Edsa I, Edsa II, and PeNoy.
Meanwhile,
the power crisis in Mindanao is growing unabated despite an
overabundance of capacity from hydroelectric dams that were deliberately
sabotaged. The NGCP now projects an average shortfall there of 179
megawatts (MW) next month and a high 345 MW in April, even when just one
facility, the Agus-Pulangi hydroelectric complex, already has 727 MW of
installed capacity — this despite its production of only 467 MW today
due to seemingly deliberate maintenance deficiencies.
Two Napocor
power barges, 117 and 118, privatized to Aboitiz’ Therma Marine Corp.
can, as well, generate 200 MW; but the rates are so high that the 33
Mindanao electric cooperatives refuse to buy from them.
Four power
barges of Psalm, 101 to 104, lying idle in Luzon are being asked by the
Mindanao Business Council to be deployed there to provide emergency
power. But this cannot be done allegedly because it would violate the
Epira’s ban on government from participating in power generation, even
if it is just to help the people. How twisted, indeed, have our
country’s laws become? Yet some twisted minds still have reason to
celebrate Edsa?
(Tune in to 1098AM, dwAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo
OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.; watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL
edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15
p.m., on “Hocus PCOS: New proof of cheating?;” visit
http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio
archives)
(Reprinted with permission from Mr. Herman Tiu-Laurel)
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL:
http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20120227com5.html
