Belmonte insists Congress proposal to avert power crisis better than Senate’s

Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines–Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. has urged the Senate not to insist on passing the burden to consumers in its version of a joint resolution giving emergency powers to President Aquino to address the electricity shortage in the summer.

“I still think our system is the best one,” he said of the House of Representatives’ version of the measure that would allow government to address the power crisis through the Interruptible Load Program (ILP).

Under the ILP, self-generating establishments will use their own generator sets (gensets) instead of tapping into the Luzon grid at peak hours, and will be reimbursed by government.

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate have passed their versions, and are in the process of reconciling the differences, including on funding, in a bicameral conference.

The House version would tap the Malampaya funds for the costs the government would incur in recompensing the ILP participants, while the Senate version would pass the cost on to the consumers.

But Belmonte said he could not understand why this was even an issue when protecting consumer interests should be paramount.

“The small fry who doesn’t have a backyard generator will bear the brunt of this very short emergency,” he said.

Belmonte said there should be strict monitoring of the power usage of ILP participants, including big malls and other establishments.

“We really believe that the big firms have that power already, and we have a mechanism for allowing them to use their [own gensets] and recompensing them for it. I just said government should see to it that we’re paying for something that exists,” he said.

“They can’t use a small amount of power and then charge us for a very big amount,” Belmonte said.

He also said he could not understand the logic behind why the Senate version would be effective until 2016, when the emergency situation would only last until the end of summer. The House version states that its effectivity shall only be until July unless withdrawn earlier.

“They [senators] want until 2016… Well you know we’re acting on the basis of information we’ve been given, [which is that] this is not a long problem. This will last only until July,” he said.

“Why should we make a law until virtually end of the term of the current President and the beginning of the term of the new President?” Belmonte said.

He said he supported pending measures to amend certain provisions of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act that were disadvantageous to government and the public.

“The major amendment [we want] is to separate the power generating function from the retailing or distribution of power, to give more teeth to government… so they’re not powerless at the hands of distributors,” he said.

Belmonte noted that foreign investors would often complain about two things in doing business in the Philippines.

The first one is “the fact that our policies are not cut in stone,” while the second is high power costs, he said. He said these were two disadvantages in spite of the country’s relatively cheap manpower.

RELATED STORIES

DOE execs hit for ‘overstated’ power shortage figures

Osmeña backs moves to use Malampaya funds for ILP to avert power shortage