ALFONSO CUSI, the energy secretary-designate of President-elect Rodrigo R. Duterte, needs to learn fast in order to keep up with the many complicated issues in the oil and power sectors.
“He has to do a lot of reading. It is a critical agency, so he has to move fast. He has to learn fast,” said Tomas I. Alcantara, CEO of Alsons Consolidated Resources Inc. (Acri).
Though he lacks the expertise in dealing with energy-related issues, Alcantara said Cusi is willing to learn the nitty-gritty details of this highly competitive, yet very complicated, industry.
“When I called him up to congratulate him, he said he will work hard,” Alcantara said after Acri’s stockholders’ meeting on Friday.
Alcantara and Cusi have worked together during the latter’s stint at the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA). The incoming energy chief served as general manager of the PPA during the Arroyo administration. Cusi is widely known as a friend of Jose Miguel, the husband of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
“I have worked with him. When he was with the PPA, I was the vice chairman of the PPA’s executive committee,” Alcantara said.
On May 21 Cusi said he would “strive to do my best to help the Duterte administration achieve electrification of the entire country; ensure reliable, steady and affordable power supply; and work toward greater energy self-sufficiency as part of its agenda of sustained economic growth, social progress and political stability in the next six years.”
He said he was “humbled” by his appointment to head the Department of Energy, adding that he would try his best to “ensure reliable, steady and affordable power supply” in the Philippines.
On Duterte’s choices for his Cabinet, Alcantara said he has “mixed feelings,” because “some are not as disturbing as others.”
He did not elaborate. He also refused to give Duterte any unsolicited advice on energy-related issues.
“We have to wait for the completion of the Cabinet appointments and his State of the Nation Address, because those will define what he will do,” Alcantara said. Duterte will become the first President from Mindanao, a region where the Alcantara group is a major power player.
“Duterte is a Mindanaoan. It’s logical that more attention would be given to Mindanao. So many people are riding on that logic. People are taking a second look at the prospects in Mindanao,” he said.
By 2019, Acri-affiliated power facilities will have around 588 megawatts of generating capacity, about 25 percent of Mindanao’s projected peak-power demand for that year.
3 comments
Alfonso Cusi please consider Nuclear Power as a safe, carbon-neutral, GHG-free energy source. New reactor designs are passively safe, so we should consider including nuclear in our energy mix, to achieve energy independence
Why does Duterte’s cabinet looks like’s Arroyo’s?
it’s gma’s boys again, what is his expertise? what good he has done ? baka naman it’s easy money by adding cost to our fuel