Panay Electric Co. refuted the claim of businessman Enrique Razon against the electricity distributor, saying his bid to take over the franchise to operate Iloilo’s power distribution needs is being railroaded in Congress.
PECO said in a statement that it had provided the power needs of Iloilo City households and business establishments for nearly a century. PECO alleged that Monte Oro Resources & Energy Minerals Corp., which Razon’s Prime Metroline Holdings Inc. partly owns, was attempting to take over PECO’s franchise.
“Our company stands out among over 140 distribution utilities in the Philippines, a fact duly recognized by the Energy Regulatory Commission when we were awarded 100 percent fully compliant in securing and insuring reliability of power supply in our franchise area,” PECO said. It added, only four other distribution utilities had received that award.
PECO said Razon had claimed 1,800 customer complaints were registered against the power distributor. But PECO said only 194 complaints were validated with the ERC out of 64,000 customers, or 0.003 percent of total subscribers. To date, only 25 complaints were pending with the ERC, with some involving power pilferage, PECO said.
PECO cited that ERC records showed that as of 2017, the Province of Siquijor Electric Coop. Inc. charged P14.0763 and was the most expensive in Visayas, compared with PECO’s rate of justy P8.2079.
“There are 19 other utilities in the Visayas alone with higher rates than PECO. VECO (Visayan Electric Co.) of Cebu charges P8.1387, which is not much less than the rate of PECO,” PECO said in a statement.
“Mr. Razon can easily check data from the Distribution Management Committee of the ERC regarding the electric reliability figures of the country,” PECO said.
“The data clearly states that the country averages for SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration Index) are at 5,135.43 minutes, contrary to Razon’s claims of 54 minutes and SAIFI (System Average Interruption Frequency Index) are at 40.31 incidents, contrary to his figure of 2.18 incidents,” Peco said.
This puts Iloilo City’s total SAIDI of 1552.86 minutes and SAIFI of 31.71 far below the national averages.
PECO said its system’s loss for 2017 was pegged at 8.37 percent, or below the ERC cap of 8.5 percent.