16 NOVEMBER 2007

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LOTILLA ALSO acknowledges that EPIRA itself is an imperfect piece of legislation. In fact, it was a product of much compromise and negotiations, and was even tainted by allegations of bribery involving congressmen in the 11th House of Representatives. And as soon as she signed the power reform bill into law, President Arroyo had called on Congress to immediately start working on its amendments.

Since the 12th Congress, Arroyo has been certifying the “urgent enactment of needed consensus amendments to the law” purportedly to level the playing field even more and to institute additional safeguards for consumers. In the 14th Congress, the president's eldest son, Pampanga Congressman and House energy committee chair Juan Miguel 'Mikey' Arroyo, has filed an amendatory bill to hasten the privatization of NPC assets.



CONSUMERS and taxpayers, more than the government, are bearing the full burden of a policy reform measure as the EPIRA. [photo by Jaileen F. Jimeno]
The changes being proposed include reducing from 70 percent to 50 percent the required generation capacity of NPC assets in Luzon and Visayas to be privatized, reducing from 70 percent to 50 percent the required portion of total energy output of IPPs to be transferred to IPP administrators, as well as allowing the national government to assume the NPC's remaining financial obligations of P400 billion.

But with the recent successful auctions of the Masinloc and Calaca plants, whatever amendments being contemplated by legislators could be overtaken by the recent turn of events, says Viray.

Even industry players caution against amending EPIRA. They say what is urgently needed is its “proper and more determined” implementation. Officials of First Generation Holdings Corporation, for instance, think the proposal to privatize only half of NPC’s assets violates the spirit of the law to minimize, if not eliminate, state involvement in the power industry. First Gen President Federico Lopez even warned recently that any amendments would “crack open a hornet’s nest of controversy and uncertainty that will reverse all the gains achieved thus far.”

For civil-society stakeholders, though, the power sector needs nothing short of an overhaul. FDC’s Pascual says real change in the industry needs the participation of all the stakeholders, primarily the consumers.

“It has to start from below,” she says, “from the communities that do not enjoy electricity, to the communities that are being forced to accept dirty fossil fuel plants in the name of progress, to ordinary communities that can't afford the high electricity rates we continue to pay despite the strong peso and so-called robust economy.”

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