Law failed to lower rates for power after 10 years

A CRITIC of the 10-year-old Electric Power Reform Act said Tuesday that law had failed to lower electricity rates and instead resulted in higher power bills.

Tuesday was the 10th anniversary of the signing of that bill, which became law during the Arroyo administration.

“The promise then was that [the act] would bring down power rates and ease the financial burdens of the cash-strapped National Power Corp.,” said Renato Reyes Jr., secretary-general of the left-wing group Bayan.

“Neither of these happened, and consumers are worse off now than they were 10 years ago.”

Reyes said the average rates of the country’s biggest power distributor, Manila Electric Co., more than doubled during the law’s implementation.

In 2000 the average rate was only P4.87 per kilowatt hour, but it more than doubled last year to P10.35 per kilowatt hour. And state-run National Power Corp.’s rate for the Luzon grid went up to P4.67 per kilowatt hour last year from P2.39, Reyes said.

“[The law] legitimized the Purchased Power Adjustment or the PPA that consumers protested [against] in 2001,” Reyes said.

He said the government also introduced new charges so that National Power could recover from its debts, which had resulted from its losses and the onerous contracts that the government had signed with independent power producers.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives on Monday night approved on third and final reading a law extending to 20 years the government’s subsidy to power consumers nationwide who belong to the poorest of the poor—including the consumers of Manila Electric Co.

The people covered are those who use 100 kilowatt hours or less a month. –Jeremiah F. de Guzman and Maricel Cruz, Manila Standard Today