Senator Sherwin Gatchalian is pushing for a uniform electricity procurement process that could save consumers as much as P13 billion annually in electricity charges.
Gatchalian, the chairman of the Senate Energy Committee and principal sponsor of the Senate Bill No. 1653, or the Electricity Procurement Act of 2018, said the generation charge, which made up about half of the costs shouldered by consumers in their monthly electricity bills, had long been the product of negotiated contracts between distribution utilities and generation companies.
The process, hidden from public scrutiny, has often given rise to “allegations of sweetheart deals and raised concerns about how the prices of contracts unduly favor generation companies at the expense of the consumers,” he said during his sponsorship speech ofthe measure last week.
The senator hailed the bill as a “revolutionary bill that will remove the veil of secrecy that has for so long covered power supply contracting—a veil that should not have been there in the first place, because it is the consumers who have been paying for every single centavo of what has been contracted.”