POWER retailer Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) on Thursday gave assurances it will continue to maintain its service commitment to its customer even after the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) slashed its average distribution charge for the regulatory year 2012 to 2015.
“We will have to work within the approved expenditure levels while maintaining our service commitments to our customers,” Ivanna de la Peña, Meralco regulatory management head, said.
The ERC’s final determination came after 11 months of regulatory scrutiny and public hearings, which approved a P37.2-billion capital-expenditure program for Meralco for the third regulatory period, or from July 2011 to June 2015.
“The ERC disagreed with a number of our project proposals and imposed more stringent performance standards for the company. Nonetheless, we remain unrelenting in our commitment to provide reliable and efficient electric service at affordable cost to our customers,” de la Peña said.
Over the course of the second regulatory period from July 2007 to June 2011, de la Peña said Meralco met or even surpassed performance indicators set by the regulators for various operations and service areas. For example, the frequency and duration of interruptions went down by about 50 percent.
De la Peña added that system loss also significantly improved to 7.94 percent last year from 9.28 percent in 2008.
The average processing time for service applications, according to de la Peña, was also shortened from 15.80 days to 5.46 days from 2008 to 2010.
The ERC reduced Meralco’s combined distribution, supply and metering rates to P1.5828 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for regulatory year 2012, which will cover the period July 2011 to June 2012. The approved rate, according to the ERC, is P0.0636 lower than the prevailing maximum average price of P1.6464/kWh.
According to the ERC ruling, Meralco’s rates will then remain stable for the remainder of the third regulatory period, which will be up to June 2015.
The ERC also directed Meralco to submit a rate translation proposal by June 13, which would convert the final determination rate into tariffs schedules for the various customer categories, which will then be subjected to more public hearings by the regulator.
