At least two lawmakers have blamed the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) for the massive power outages in Panay Island.
For his part, Santa Rosa City Rep. Dan Fernandez said the NGCP should refund approximately P70 billion in overcharged fees to its consumers.
Meanwhile, Senator Imee Marcos said she remained unconvinced that investing part of the Maharlika Fund in the NGCP was the right way to solve the power transmission problems nationwide.
“For the longest time we have been calling out NGCP for the delays in its projects – some of which have reached decades without completion,” said AnaKalusugan party-list Rep. Ray Reyes, a member of the House Committee on Energy.
“But instead of upgrading our system, they prioritized massive dividends and lavish celebrations for their shareholders and directors,” he added.
Reyes said the blackouts in Panay could have been prevented had the NGCP finished the Panay-Negros-Cebu interconnection project on time.
“The completion of the Panay-Negros-Cebu backbone project has been moved six times from the original target date of December 2020. It has been 2024 and that our people are the ones suffering for your (NGCP) neglect,” he added.
The legislator also chided NGCP for its lack of preparation, noting that a similar power blackout hit Panay Island April last year.
“There’s no excuse given that his happened last year. They should have been better prepared in handling and preventing these types of diaturbances,” Reyes added.
He also said he supports his fellow lawmakers in Western Visayas who are calling for an investigation on the matter.
What we need right now is to hold those responsible accountable for the severe impact on people’s lives and economic activities,” Reyes stressed.
Fernandez vice chairman of the House energy committee, said that during the scheduled congressional hearing on its operations, NGCP will not only be asked to explain the reasons behind the recent outages that paralyzed Panay Island at the onset of the new year.
“NGCP, the country’s power grid operator that is partially owned by Chinese corporations, must present to concerned Lower House committees a plausible justification as to why it should not return over P70 billion it pocketed by overcharging Filipinos for its services in years,” Fernandez said in a statement.
“Why should the MIC spend money to improve the performance of the NGCP when it is regulated by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC)? Why should we use public funds when regulatory measures are available?” the senator asked.
She cited provisions of Republic Act 9136 – the Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001 to bolster her arguments.
The NGCP itself said funding was not a problem, but Marcos questioned how the NGCP has been spending its net income.
“The problem of NGCP is not lack of cash but lack of performance. The NGCP’s comprehensive income totalled P307 billion in the past 14 years, of which P239 billion or more than 77 percent has been distributed to shareholders, even as the NGCP claimed P309 billion in transmission upgrades,” the senator noted.
Calling for a review of the NGCP’s franchise in Senate Resolution 832, Marcos said the “alarming lack of improvement” in the NGCP’s power transmission capacity has caused “automatic load-dropping incidents and grid-level outages, inadequate procurement of ancillary services to prevent outages, and delays in the completion of grid projects lasting as long as seven years.”
“We could have avoided the recent power outage in Panay if the Cebu-Negros-Panay Backbone Project and the Visayas-Mindanao Interconnection Project were finished on schedule. Now, billions have been spent with no ROI (return on investment) in sight,” the senator said.
Marcos said that instead of investing in the NGCP, the government should exclude unfinished projects in the computation of the private corporation’s rates.
“This will incentivize the NGCP to finish projects before recouping costs,” she explained.
“There should be penalties for delays,” she added, citing the recent decision of the ERC to exclude on-going projects in resetting rates of the NGCP.
Right-of-way problems and the long process of obtaining permits from local governments also contributed to the delay in the NGCP’s interconnection projects.
Marcos recalled former President Rodrigo Duterte’s Executive Order No. 30, which created the Energy Investment Coordinating Council (EICC) and recognized energy projects as rojects of national significance.
“Given the problem of permitting faced by NGCP projects, the inclusion of the respective leagues of local government units in the EICC can help in simplifying the process,” the senator said.