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Senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Miriam Defensor Santiago will lose
their face and the Senate will lose any moral ascendancy it has if
it follows the decision of the House to shelve the measure amending
the Electric Power Industry Act (Epira).
The House Committee on Energy headed by
presidential son Rep. Mikey Arroyo of Pampanga has manifested that
it was no longer interested in amending the Epira. Arroyo said
amending Epira is now “moot and academic” because the industry
players had already agreed to accelerate the implementation of open
access and that amending it would be a disincentive to foreign
investors. He also said that the Joint Congressional Power
Commission (PowerCom), which he co-heads with Senator Miriam, could
better address the concerns in the power sector.
If the House persists, then no amendment is
possible since it is both the Senate and the House that must pass
that amendment. Should this be reason enough for perceived
presidential allies in the Senate, notably JPE and Senator Miriam,
to give up on Epira amendments? It definitely is not, and I hope the
Senate would stay the course. The senators would look funny if,
after giving an earful to the Joint Foreign Chambers (JFC), they
would suddenly beat a hasty retreat.
JFC letter draws Senate’s ire
The senators rose in rightful indignation when
the JFC wrote a letter to President Arroyo expressing their
opposition to the amendment of Epira. They were earlier divided in
the row between Meralco and the Government Service Insurance System
but they were one in denouncing the JFC for writing that letter
instead of giving their position to the legislature during public
hearings. JPE said that the JFC members were “in effect pressuring
the government not to recognize efforts of the people’s
representatives to ease their burden of high power rates.”
They later roasted the JFC officials at a
hearing called by the Senate Committee on Energy headed by Senator
Miriam. She had earlier announced that the hearing would be
conducted by the PowerCom. (When the House begged off from the joint
hearing, the senators should have seen it as hint of what its stand
on amending Epira is.) Now, after that vehement reaction, the
senators would now look like wimps should they yield to the House
decision against amending the questionable provisions of Epira.
Now, what are the amendments needed to protect
the interest of consumers? Senators Nene Pimentel and Loren Legarda
said that the provision on systems loss should be revisited. “It
is not fair that the power stolen by Pedro should be paid by
Juan,” Pimentel said. The senators were also incensed when they
learned that even the power consumed by Meralco offices were passed
on to consumers as “systems loss.”
Key Epira amendments
JPE, the principal author of the Epira
amendments, said that a key provision in his bill prohibits the
passing on of stranded costs of all industry participants to
consumers. Stranded costs refer to the excess of the contracted cost
of electricity over the actual selling price in the market. Section
32 of JPE’s bill states: “In order to reflect the true cost of
power and to avoid additional burden to the consumers, there shall
henceforth be no recovery of stranded debts and contract costs for
the National Power Corp., Power Sector Assets and Liabilities
Management Corp., generation companies and distribution
utilities.”
Section 31 of the bill also seeks to hasten
retail competition and open access by lowering from 70 percent to 50
percent the privatization of Napocor generation assets in Luzon and
the Visayas. Open access, which gives consumers the right to choose
their power distributors, was supposed to have started in 2004,
three years after the enactment of Epira. However, kinks in the
privatization process delayed its advent.
Section 35 of JPE’s bill is another
pro-consumer provision. It states that to lower electricity rates to
end users, the President shall reduce the royalties, returns and
taxes of the national government for the exploitation of all
indigenous sources of energy whenever the interest of the general
public so requires.
The hated ‘take-or-pay’ untouched
One provision of the current Epira that all
consumers would gladly see amended pertains to the take-or-pay
provision in existing contracts with independent power producers.
JPE had charged that in one year alone, an independent power
producer which he did not name charged consumers P12 billion for
power that consumers did not receive. Despite this inequity of the
take-or-pay provision, the Senate would not touch it all in amending
Epira.
“Under the Constitution, we could not pass any
law impairing obligations or contracts. We will respect those
contracts, including the take-or-pay provisions that require us to
pay for power that they did not produce,” JPE explained.
efrendanao2003@yahoo.com
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