NGCP playing the victim card, again
It is the responsibility of the government to ensure that competition in the electricity market is maintained and not left in the hands of private enterprises.
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It is the responsibility of the government to ensure that competition in the electricity market is maintained and not left in the hands of private enterprises.
I nearly fell off my chair after reading the statement issued by the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines as a reaction to the Energy Regulatory Commission's resolution meting a P5.1 million for not complying with the Department of Energy circular requiring the procurement of reserves.
NGCP claims, "The relentless attacks we suffered, and the fault-finding where there was no fault to be found was a clear indication to us that this, and other contemporaneous moves undertaken by certain players in the industry, were part of a larger, orchestrated plan to put their economic interests above ours, even at the expense of the consumers."
Once again, instead of owning responsibility, the NGCP blames everyone, pulls out the victim card, and proceeds to scare the Filipino consumers that such acts of ERC will eventually hurt them.
This has long been NGCP's manipulative tactic: claiming to be a law-abiding corporate citizen subjected to unjust treatment when in reality it behaves as an ungovernable entity dominating and controlling the whole national transmission system or the central nervous system of the country's power sector.
The Filipino electricity consumers must commend the ERC led by its current chairperson, Atty. Monalisa C. Dimalanta, for standing up to a bully who wants to have a monopolistic grip on all the businesses in the electricity market, including the bidding for ancillary power.
There is no such thing as an "orchestrated plan" or a sinister plot in the decision of the ERC. It was simply because NGCP failed to submit its terms of reference and invitation to bid for the procurement of ancillary services, and it published and maintained on its website the TOR and the ITB, without prior approval from the DoE, in violation of the government regulations and policies.
It has always been the position of NGCP that the DoE has no regulatory powers over it. So all these acts of NGCP disregarding DoE regulations are deliberate and intentional. Therein lies the danger because NGCP currently wields an absolute grip on the central nervous system of the Philippine power grid by controlling its System Operation.
As National Transmission Corporation's President for five years, I always maintained the position that NGCP should not control the System Operation of the national transmission grid because of the following reasons:
(1) National Security. As a System Operator, NGCP, a private corporation, holds the proverbial "switch" to shut down power in the entire country. There is no country in the world where the government holds no control over the system operation of the power grid except the Philippines. We gave it up in favor of a private corporation being chaired by a citizen of China; and
(2) The government, as the System Operator of the transmission grid, shall retain control of the transmission development plan. Presently, the government has no effective control over how the transmission system is being developed. These were all left in the hands of NGCP, a private entity with the DNA of only maximizing profits and minimizing costs.
I have always argued for government to re-take control of the System and Market Operations of the electricity grid because of public interest. It is the responsibility of the government to ensure that competition in the electricity market is maintained and not left in the hands of private enterprises. Our electricity sector is currently in bad shape. We are only next to Japan (a first-world nation) in terms of electricity rates. We cannot build power plants anywhere in the country without restrictions on capacity. We have no island interconnections, and there are no redundancies in our transmission line to provide secure and reliable electricity. For example, power plants in the Visayas cannot transmit electricity to Luzon island.
We were accused of having economic interests in this policy position but these were more imagined than real. The Philippine economy relies on having a cheap and abundant supply of electricity for it to compete with other economies — this should be the responsibility of the government. Without control of the System and Market Operations of the grid, the government is rendered inutile in ensuring cheap electricity.
