THE Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), the country’s biggest power distributor, said Wednesday that its customers will experience a P0.4234 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) reduction in the generation-charge component of their June electricity bills.

From its May level of P4.8754/kWh, Meralco said the generation charge this June will go down to P4.4520/kWh.

The said reduction was due mainly to the low prices obtained from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM), Meralco said in a statement.

Meralco added that the cost of energy it sourced from the WESM in May was among the lowest since the market opened in July 2006.

There was an almost P5/kWh reduction in the basic cost of power, from P7.86/kWh in April to only P2.93/kWh in May.

Factoring in all the adjustments, the net cost of WESM supply further went down to P1.81/kWh in May from P7.34/kWh in April, for a reduction of P5.53/kWh.

Following the reduction in the generation charge, system-loss charges also went down for all customer classes. Residential customers will experience an additional reduction of P0.0638/kWh in their bills as a result of lower system-loss charges. Combining generation charge and system-loss reductions, residential customers, therefore, will see a P0.4872/kWh decrease in their June electricity bills from these two components.

A lifeline customer consuming 50 kWh will see a P13.23 reduction in his electric bill this June.  Enjoying a lifeline discount of 50 percent, this bill this June at P207.78 means that he pays P4.16/kWh for basic uses of electricity.

In April 2008, there were close to 700,000 customers consuming within 50 kWh.  Those consuming 100 kWh who are still in the lifeline category will be billed P42.92 less this June, a 6-percent reduction from his May bill.

There were 1.6 million residential customers in the lifeline category (100 kWh or less) in April 2008.  

A typical Meralco residential customer consuming 200 kWh will pay P114.41 less this June, for a reduction in his bill of P0.5721/kWh.    

“We have always maintained that whatever savings we incur from the cost of power we obtain from our suppliers would be passed on to our customers. The generation charge is a pass-through charge, which Meralco does not earn from,” Meralco said.

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Consumer watch group tells Meralco: Don’t hide refund figures

CONSUMER watch group National Association of Electricity Consumers for Reforms (Nasecore)  has asked the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to compel the Manila Electric Co., (Meralco) to make public the meter and bill deposits and history of its 4.4 million customers to allow them to decide how they want their refund done.

In a letter to ERC chairman Rodolfo Albano dated June 10, Nasecore president Pete Ilagan said these information the Meralco used to provide in its web site was no longer available a few days before the ERC issued an order directing Meralco to refund around P21 billion in meter and bill deposits to its customers, including interests. The collection, which began in the 1980s, was deemed authorized and illegal.

Ilagan said he discovered the unavailability of the information when he visited the Meralco web site in the hope of looking into the meter and bill deposits of some customers seeking his group’s assistance by going to the log-in page of e-Meralco bill.

“As we enter the e-Meralco bill page, the user is led to the customer management system page.  Surprisingly, however, upon reaching the customer management system page, services on inquiry, billing history and others are no longer accessible as they used to be and no explanation is given at all for their inaccessibility,” he said.

In the absence of any explanation from Meralco, Ilagan said he now believed that the removal was deliberate and intentional so that Meralco could hide from its 4.4 million customers their respective individual and corporate deposits and prevent them from doing their own computation at 10-percent interest since September 1995.

 “It may interest the commission to know that this service under the customer management system page of the Meralco web site was still accessible on May 28, 2008, though,” he added.

Ilagan requested the commission to direct Meralco to immediately restore accessibility to the various services under the customer management system page so that its customers may be able to know how much refund they are entitled to.

Lastly, he also requested the commission to also direct the rest of the distribution utilities in the country to post in their respective web sites the amount of refund each customer is entitled to so that Meralco will not complain that they are being singled out.

Ilagan said the meter and bill deposits lumped and booked as customer deposits in Meralco’s 2006 audited annual financial statements in the amount of P19.95 billion,

These deposits were given a 6-percent interest until the issuance of ERB Resolution 95-21 in 1995, increasing said interest to 10 percent, he added.

Shortly after the ERC issued the refund directive, a number of lawmakers, among them Sen. Loren Legarda, sought an immediate implementation of the refund.

Legarda said the ERC should stop giving in to Meralco’s requests for more time.

THE Department of Agriculture (DA) projects that palay harvest for January to June may exceed 7.1 million metric tons (MMT).

THE government continues to fill its rice warehouses in Central Luzon with imported stocks while keeping aside the 25,535 bags of unmilled grains earlier procured to offset the impact of the lean season, which came much earlier than usual.

THE National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) regional office in Davao is pinning its hopes on Administrative Order (AO) 225 to enable the region to achieve rice self-sufficiency in the near term.

Government grants for research and development (R&D) activities continue to increase as universities and R&D institutions become more active in pursuing new discoveries in numerous fields, particularly biotechnology, agriculture and pharmaceuticals.

THE Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), the country’s biggest power distributor, said Wednesday that its customers will experience a P0.4234 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) reduction in the generation-charge component of their June electricity bills.

IN the face of unrelenting increases in the price of oil, former President Fidel Ramos on Tuesday suggested that the government should look closely into other indigenous sources of power, instead of the administration pinning its hope on a revived Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (Bnpp).

WHAT is required to succeed in business and in management is a formula that’s been shifting over the past decade or two in some very important ways. Career paths and approaches to work that were winners throughout much of this century are no longer paying off well. Nevertheless, a significant number of people are still trying to use the old strategies, with frequent encouragement from most major institutions: big business, big labor, government and education.

WITH the advent of electronic commerce (e-commerce) in the country, online shopping has slowly made its way to the Filipino buying culture. Today, more and more Internet-savvy consumers are stepping into “virtual retail outlets” to find a vast collection of products, ranging from the simple to novelty, or from cheap to classy.