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MANILA TIMES
Thursday, May 29, 2008
PROMETHEUS BOUND
By Giovanni Tapang, Ph.D.
Ka Bel's electric dream
Crispin Beltran was laid to rest yesterday. The labor leader and advocate
of the poor was 75 when he fell down a ladder while fixing their roof. He
has been the consumer's champion against high electricity rates inside and
outside of Congress. He went to the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to
petition against unwarranted rate increases and joined pickets and rallies
on power related issues. On the day of his death, Congressman Beltran
would have had filed a bill to remove the value added tax (VAT) on
electric power, which accounts for a little more than 10 percent of our
electric bill.
Ka Bel has taken the adage of "practicing what you preach" seriously in
his advocacy for lower electricity rates. In 2001, he refused to pay the
Power Purchase Adjustment (infamously known as the PPA) which accounted
for more than half of his bill. His refusal to pay for undelivered power
led to the disconnection of his electricity service.
As electricity rates rise amid the already high cost of food and fuel, the
government's solution is an Arroyo take-over of Meralco and the
acceleration of Napocor's privatization. Will these really stop
ever-increasing electricity rates and reduce our electricity bill?
Half of our electric bill is taken up by the generation rate where part of
the PPA that Ka Bel refused to pay was hidden. It includes the take-or-pay
provisions in the contracts of independent power producers (IPP) with
distributors and Napocor. It ensures guaranteed returns for the IPPs even
in cases where no power is delivered to our homes. One estimate is that
these take-or-pay provisions account for more than 15 percent of our total
bill.
Government taxes account for another ten percent of our power bill. There
is VAT applied on the generation, transmission and distribution components
of our bill. There is even VAT on systems loss and subsidies for the
lifeline rates taken from customers using more than 100 kWh per month.
Subsidies and franchise taxes add another 1.35 percent to the total.
Systems-loss accounts for another nine percent. It is mainly due to any
technical inefficiency on the part of the distributors, their in-house use
of electricity and pilferages. Why are we paying for pilferage when a
violator is required to pay consequent fees under the Anti-Pilferage Act?
Additional pass-on charges include the metering charge and universal
charges. In the future, stranded cost and debt recoveries of Napocor and
distribution utilities which amount to around P200 billion will be
collected from consumers.
All these charges add up to around 40 percent of our electricity bills. If
you include other government royalties, these pass on charges could rise
to about half of our power costs. This means that only the remaining half
of our electric bill is electric power that you have actually used. The
rest are due to pass-on charges, taxes and undelivered power due to
inefficiencies and take-or-pay contracts. This is the same problem that
Congressman Beltran pointed out in 2001 and only shows that the PPA
remains embedded in our electricity rates.
Instead of waging an advertisement war and staging a takeover of Meralco,
the government could have immediately reduced our bill to half by removing
the VAT and government taxes on power, the systems loss and renegotiating
to remove the take-or-pay provisions in IPP contracts.
The government could have moved to repeal the Electric Power Industry
Reform Act which allows passing on these charges to consumers. Under the
EPIRA, one of the first laws Mrs. Arroyo signed during her presidency,
consumers seem to be the perpetual milking cow of the government,
distribution utilities, Napocor and independent power producers. Under the
government's plan to accelerate the privatization of Napocor, we can only
expect more rate increases as consumers absorb the losses incurred by the
power industry players.
In addition, consumers must not be made to shoulder other recoveries such
as the P14 billion Napocor-Meralco settlement and the P9 billion in
generation charges from Napocor's "market-power abuse" in the WESM in
2006. Both cases are pending in the ERC.
Ka Bel's electric dream of reducing power rates can be realized if laws
such as the EPIRA that are biased against consumers are scrapped and cheap
and accessible utilities like electricity are made available to the
public. We cannot have band-aid solutions that only provide brownie points
to the government but will burden the people in the long run.
prom.bound@gmail.com
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