Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. is pushing for a partial tax exemption for electric cooperatives, but only those servicing missionary rural areas.

Pimentel submitted the counter-proposal following the filing of a bill in the House of Representatives seeking to restore tax-exemption privileges of power cooperatives engaged in generation and distribution of electricity to their members.

“I favor the restoration of tax exemption for electric cooperatives, but only for the portion of their services to missionary areas, not for all their services,” Pimentel said.

He added that electric cooperatives, like the major power distributors, should no longer be allowed to pass on their system losses to their customers. “Electric cooperatives should strengthen their safeguards against loss of electricity, through technical troubles or pilferage, instead of requiring customers to absorb the costs from these system losses,” Pimentel said.

As the principal author of the Cooperative code of the Philippines, Pimentel pointed out that electric cooperatives are not genuine cooperatives as envisioned by lawmakers, if strict compliance with the requirements of the Code is applied.

He stressed the need to make the electric firms servicing rural areas understand that “it is incongruous for them to be called ‘cooperatives’ when they are not.”

He hinted that this flaw may be corrected as one of the amendments to the Cooperative Code to be embodied in a bill now being deliberated in the Senate.

THE government has abandoned its bid to a balanced budget and instead will allow its financial plans to run a deficit of up P75 billion, or about 1 percent of the gross domestic product.

WHEN liquidity problems struck the preneed industry in 2005, 49-year-old office personnel Diosdada Marquez was worried that her insurance provider might not be able to pay its obligations to her retirement policy that would mature that year.

NEWLY established Sterling Bank of Asia Inc. expects to be fully operational by 2012, and plans to buy a “problem-free” commercial bank within four years from now, president Lamberto Villena said Wednesday.

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. is pushing for a partial tax exemption for electric cooperatives, but only those servicing missionary rural areas.

Lawmakers sidestepped lengthy bicameral talks on differing provisions of the income-tax reform bill after House members agreed to just adopt the Senate version of the measure increasing allowable exemption claims for individual and corporate tax filers.

DAVAO CITY—The move to rescue the ailing rural banks is necessary and important, as these banks are directly serving the countryside.

THE peso yesterday closed at its intra day low of P43.72 per dollar, from P43.75, following an uptrend in most of the region’s currencies as crude oil prices come off their peaks.