More affiliate earmarks P1B for Bohol line upgrade

ILOILO CITY — Primelectric Holdings Inc., a sister company of Razon-led MORE Electric and Power Corp., is readying an initial P1 billion to bring better services to Bohol.

“Investments in Bohol should be about P1 billion, which would be doable in the next four years because Bohol is not as big as CENECO (Central Negros Electric Cooperative) and Iloilo. I was looking at the system and it’s repairable; it just needs improvements,” MORE Power president and CEO Roel Z. Castro said in an interview.

According to Castro, the budget will fund the establishment of modern systems such as automatic circuit recloser (ACR) to minimize outages and round-the-clock customer service to respond to customer inquiries.

Anti-outages tool

“Most of the distributors don’t have ACRs. As I have pointed out, they help avert about 98 percent to 99 percent outages — that one will immediately bring improvement. Another is the helpline. Here in Iloilo, if there is one thing that we ensured on day one, it is the response team,” he added.

Primelectric bought SPC Power Corp.’s shares in Bohol Light Co. Inc. (BLCI), a power distributor serving Tagbilaran City, in April. SPC sold 29.92 million common shares in BLCI for P199.5 million.

SPC Power owned 53.66 percent interest in BLCI, which has a 25-year franchise to operate electric, light and power services until 2025, based on its 2023 annual report.