ERC completes benchmark hearing in Negros Occ.
BACOLOD CITY -- The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) has finished conducting public consultations in Negros Occidental with regard to the Rules for Setting the Electric Cooperatives’ Wheeling Rates, or benchmarking.
Yesterday, VRESCO was the last cooperative visited by the agency to do the consultation with member-consumers. On Tuesday and Wednesday the ERC visited NOCECO and CENECO respectively.
ERC commissioner Jose Reyes said the public should understand that a hike in electricity rates, like the one that will be implemented when the framework of the Standard Initial Tariff (SIT) has been finalized, will benefit end-users or CENECO member-consumers in the long run.
The SIT will determine the cost of distribution based on operating expenses and performance of EC’s, Reyes said.
CENECO board president Edward Gasambelo said as a general rule they are against any rate increases but if it would redound to better services why not?
Bacolod City Councilor Jocelle Batapa-Sigue, chairperson of the Sangguniang Panlungsod committee on energy, noted the present burdens of the global financial downturn at the hearing, suggesting for the ERC to help defer rate hikes until the economy stabilizes.
Reyes argued that there will always be opposition to rate hikes, saying that there will “never be an appropriate time” for price increases in the eyes of consumers.
Meanwhile, George Sanchez, a consumer welfare advocate, suggested the possibility of CENECO getting a loan from a bank to finance some of its operational costs like repairs and expansion instead of hiking rates.
Reyes, however, said that borrowing from a bank will incur interest debts for CENECO, which, if summed up, will be a bigger burden for consumer-members when the cooperative passes on the expenses to them later on.
Reyes assured the public that the new rates will be commensurate with the performance of an electric cooperative like CENECO because they will monitor EC’s for the regular assessment of their operations as basis for subsequent changes in distribution rates that will start in 2015.
He said that the price that CENECO will implement during the initial stages of SIT can either be further raised or lowered, based on such performance indicators as the frequency of brownouts that can be attributed to the EC and the quality of their response to consumers’ requests for repairs or line installations.