ENERGY Undersecretary Sharon Garin yesterday called on her former colleagues in Congress to review the franchise of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) to operate and manage the country’s power transmission lines, saying it is responsible for 80 percent of the country’s electricity problems.
Garin, a former party-list representative, said the NGCP’s December 1, 2008 franchise could be considered the “most generous” one granted to a private entity because “the concession agreement is very much in favor of the franchisee.”
“It is within the powers of Congress to review (the franchise) before expiration thereof,” Garin told the House Committee on Energy during a briefing on the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) of 2001.
The panel held the briefing amid the call of the Makabayan bloc for a congressional investigation into NGCP’s issuance of red and yellow alerts for the Luzon and Visayas grids, respectively, supposedly due to forced outages of five electric power plants and the derated capacity of three others.
Sen. Joseph Victor Ejercito has also earlier urged the Marcos administration to find ways to buy back the 40 percent shares of stock of China in the NGCP even if “it will entail a lot of cost,” pointing out that allowing China to hold on to its share raises “national security concerns,” especially amid the thinning power supply.
In a statement, the Presidential Communications Office said Sen. Raffy Tulfo yesterday met with President Marcos and urged him to look into NGCP’s performance and into the security element raised by Ejercito.
The statement said “the President agreed that the Senator should study it or to conduct hearings in order to know the real situation and if there is a need for the government to (take) full control of the entity.”
EPIRA
Garin said the DOE is proposing to amend the EPIRA law’s provisions on power transmission, saying 80 percent of the country’s electricity will be resolved once it is done.
She also said once a transmission company fails to deliver projects on time, the DOE wants the government to take over “be it in the form of PPP or any government funding.”
She noted that some projects get delayed for as long as two to four years and “that is why we tried to craft something to make the transmission company accountable.”
“But (amending the) franchise can also fix that,” Garin said. “We are in agreement that 80 percent of the problem of energy will be fixed with these (recommendations).”
Republic Act 9511 grants NGCP “a franchise to engage in the business of conveying or transmitting electricity through a high-voltage backbone system of interconnected transmission lines, substations and related facilities” in exchange of a franchise tax equivalent to 3 percent of all gross receipts derived from its operation.
The tax is “in lieu of income tax and any and all taxes, duties, fees, and charges of any kind, nature or description levied, established or collected by any authority whatsoever, local or national, on its franchise, rights, privileges, receipts, revenues and profits, and on properties used in connection with its franchise, from which taxes, duties and charges.”
