THE public service that has probably caused the Philippines the biggest headaches – next to its spectacularly awful telecommunications sector, of course, which continues to practice a level of dysfunctional rent-seeking that could make Satan weep – is electricity. An entire generation in this country has grown up taking it for granted that paying the continent’s highest rates for electric supplies that are, at least in some areas, anything but reliable is a fact of life. The less-than-appealing costs and capabilities of the nation’s electricity infrastructure has also been a significant handicap to industrial development, and has been near the top of the list of reasons to leave for every high-profile manufacturing concern that has pulled up the stakes and gone elsewhere in the past few years.

Things are changing, however, and changing quickly, even if it may not yet be apparent to the average consumer, whose attention is more easily captured with simple bad news than more complicated positive developments. It is one area in which there has been genuine progress since the Duterte administration took office. Unlike the Aquino administration, whose energy policy priority was to find excuses not to do things (such as placing arbitrary limits on the development of renewable energy), the current bureaucracy – mainly the Department of Energy and the Energy Regulatory Commission – has been making an honest effort to be progressive, and has produced some perhaps unexpectedly positive results.

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