Aquino: Economy to lose P23.3B due to brownouts

President Benigno Aquino III. AP FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines–President Aquino on Wednesday warned that the economy could lose up to P23.3 billion in the event of daily five-hour brownouts for three months next summer.

“The most expensive power is no power,” he told a forum of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (Focap), citing concerns expressed by private companies wary of the government’s projected power shortage early next year.

Aquino said the estimated loss “does not include foregone investment and tourist arrivals arising from the negative impact of the power outage on the country’s image as an investment and tourist destination.”

The President said a lower estimate of P9.3 billion in losses was based on daily two-hour brownouts.

‘Various powers’ sought

“I’m the guy who says ‘plan for the worst and hope for the best,’ or you can take the opposite view of ‘hope for the best and plan for the best,’” he said, reiterating his request for Congress to grant him “various powers” to address the supposed power shortage.

Aquino said that the measures the government was now trying to put in place would not lead to “that big an increase” in the cost of electricity.

He ruled out renting generators because they required about six months to be set up. He said the Interruptible Load Program was a “plausible substitute but these standby generators for the most part have never been considered as baseload plants.”

“There is a modicum of reserve. Our issue is the idea of forced outages [which] you cannot plan for,” he said.

Not exaggerating

Malacañang on Tuesday said the President and his Cabinet had been “truthful” about the projected power shortage, amid accusations that the government was exaggerating the power situation so he could be granted emergency powers.

Aquino said the government was preparing for such a shortage because it would be ultimately be blamed.

“If there is no power come our summer months, there will only be one party that will be blamed, and that will be the executive [branch],” he said.

“So we were asking from [Congress] various powers—and not emergency but these are really embodied already in Epira [Electric Power Industry Reform Act]—to address the situation if and when El Niño is really severe, the forced outages in the trend that they have shown in the past two years also continue, to address also the cannot-be-postponed Malampaya shutdown, amongst other things.”