|
By Euan Paulo C. Añonuevo
Reporter
STATE-OWNED National Power Corp.
(Napocor) will file another rate-hike petition under its generation
and foreign exchange charges next month.
Its proposed new rate however is
expected to remain close to its present level of P3.89 per
kilowatt-hour as its pending applications before the Energy
Regulatory Commission (ERC) would likely offset the latest one.
“The five to six petitions for
rate adjustments pending with the ERC is a mixed petition that could
have rate increases or rate reductions. But the sum will be not
higher than our existing rates now,” Cyril Del Callar, Napocor
president, said in a press conference.
He said Napocor’s pending
petitions have piled up at the ERC seeking changes in its generation
rate adjustment mechanism (GRAM) and incremental currency exchange
rate adjustment (ICERA), the last of which was approved by the
regulator last month to cover the billing period of July 2006 to
December 2006.
All in all the petitions will
cover adjustments from the last billing period approved by the ERC
up to June 2008.
The Napocor president said that
newly appointed ERC chairperson Zenaida Cruz-Ducut “promised to
work on the backlog.”
Napocor also has a pending
petition for an adjustment in its basic generation rate of P0.36 per
kilowatt-hour, which was filed together with its last GRAM and ICERA
petitions in early June.
The ERC then ordered Napocor to
reduce rates in Luzon by P0.7116 per kilowatt-hour and in Mindanao
by P0.0246 per kilowatt-hour. The tariff in the Visayas, however,
was increased by P0.0878 per kilowatt-hour.
If the basic generation rate is
approved, Del Callar said that prices will likely rise marginally
from its June average price of around P4.11 per kilowatt-hour.
The GRAM and the ICERA are
pass-through charges that take into account fluctuations in
Napocor’s fuel and foreign exchange costs, respectively. Both are
shouldered by its customers such as electric utilities like Manila
Electric Co.
The proposed revision in basic
generation rates take into account the impact of the sale of a
number of Napocor’s power plants under the government’s
privatization thrust.
Del Callar said that after about
half of its plants in Luzon were privatized, Napocor was left with
generating units that use expensive fuels such as bunker oil and
diesel.
“We petitioned for an increase
in base rate since the fuel types we use are expensive,” he said.
|
