Noynoy, YOU are responsible! DIE HARD III Herman Tiu Laurel 11/03/2011

Noynoy, YOU are responsible!

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

11/03/2011
Last week, when Malacañang was queried about the growing clamor for the country’s Chief Executive to finally act on the scourge that is the Philippines’ “highest power rates in Asia,” all the Palace mouthpiece could give was a one-liner that reeks of evasiveness and buck-passing.

Reacting to the call from the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI), its allied business organizations, and moderate labor groups, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) and the Associated Labor Union (ALU), deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte minced no words in saying, “Those concerns should be addressed to the ERC (Energy Regulatory Commission).”

This is the classic runaround that we, the people — from the most militant leftists and most democratic populists (like me), to the most moderate labor unions and working capitalists — have been subjected to under the decade-old Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) that brought forth this massive power price gouging now besetting the land as a waking nightmare.

For one, it isn’t true that the power service sector or industry is the sole turf of the ERC. Even the very flawed Epira, which created that inutile regulatory body, is clear that the State — which is led by the head of state or Chief Executive, a.k.a. the President — is responsible.

Epira’s Declaration of Policy in Chapter 1, Section 2, subsections (d) and (h), state that the government is mandated “To protect the PUBLIC INTEREST as it is affected by the rates and services of electric utilities and other providers of electric power; (and) To establish a strong and purely INDEPENDENT regulatory body and system to ensure CONSUMER PROTECTION (emphasis supplied)…”

The President oversees all agencies of the State to ensure that they function as defined by law. And in the ERC and the power sector’s case, as provided in Section 23 of Epira on Functions of Distribution Utilities, government must ensure that “A distribution utility shall have the obligation to supply electricity in the LEAST COST MANNER (emphasis ours) to its captive market, subject to the collection of retail rate duly approved by the ERC.”

Filipino consumers, as represented by countless people’s organizations and advocacy groups (now joined by the aforementioned trade and labor organizations), are rightfully clamoring for the Chief Executive to take action on what has become an undisputed, factual, and glaring decade-long massive overpricing of electricity in this country — long the bane of our economy, industry, and social well-being.

It is a situation aggravated by the ERC’s demonstrable collusion with the biggest electricity distributor, Meralco, when on Dec. 10, 2004 it adopted the 15.8-percent Performance Based Regulation (PBR) scheme in place of the already thoroughly scrutinized 12-percent Return-on-Rate Base (RoRB) formula, in clear defiance of a 2003 Supreme Court (SC) decision under Chief Justice Reynato Puno reaffirming the RoRB; disallowing Meralco’s pass-on of its corporate income taxes to consumers; and subjecting the power distributor to an examination of its books by the Commission on Audit (CoA) — which found, in test years 2004 and 2007 alone, that the company again overcharged customers to the tune of P7 billion.

The defiant implementation of the onerous PBR did not only prove that the ERC saw itself as a power above all; it also resulted in up to 80 percent annual increases in Meralco’s profits from 2008 to 2010, on nothing more than what the power company admits to be a paltry 3-percent increase in its customer base.

Clearly, those profit jumps — P2.7 billion in 2008; P6 billion in 2009; and P12 billion in 2010 — couldn’t have been on account of Meralco’s 11-percent increase in sales volume.

According our colleague Romeo Junia, when “PBR was instituted, Meralco’s per kWh distribution rates have gone up — from P0.9657 in 2003 under rate unbundling, to P1.2227 in May 2009, to P1.4917 in May 2010, to P1.6464 this year (P1.5828 in 2011 to be able to claim a “decrease” when it should only be P0.90), and to P1.9036 by 2015. That rate was P0.7957 per kWh in 2003 under the Return on Rate Base…”

That’s why the rate increase from the RoRB’s 12 percent to the PBR’s 15.8 percent was already a violation of the “least cost” provision of the Epira, not to mention Meralco’s franchise under RA 9209 (Section 4) which holds, “The grantee shall supply electricity to its captive market in the least cost manner… (It) shall charge reasonable, just, and competitive power rates for its services to all types of consumers within its franchised area in order that business and industries shall be able to compete.”

The ERC defends its re-formulation of the pricing mechanism by insisting that it has to follow the Epira provision that provides for “just and reasonable profit” for the service providers. But even 6 percent in profit is already “just and reasonable” according to Iligan Light power company director Jojo Borja who says, “Our family has been in the power business for 80 years; we were happy with 6-percent profit and it was an honorable business. With Epira, what we used to earn in one year we earn now in two months, and for Meralco it’s even shorter.”

TUCP Party-list Rep. Democrito Mendoza should thus tell his House leader to shut up about his push for Charter change (Cha-cha) to “entice foreign capital” because, as Mendoza said so himself, our power rates are by far “the biggest disincentive to the entry of new foreign direct investors to our shores.”

Good thing Mendoza already addressed this demand to Aquino III directly instead of the ERC.

But, as the issues in the power sector already go beyond just price gouging, involving economic sovereignty, sabotage, and plunder, Malacañang should never be allowed to shirk from its primordial duty to protect the consumer and, more importantly, the nation and its economy. So to Noynoy, we say: It’s your responsibility. Take heed or else…

(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Saturday, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8; 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/20111103com4.html