Barely a week after the fifth State of the Nation Address (SONA) of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr., the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) has dealt a “double deal” to consumers.
On the positive side, the ERC has ordered the Manila Electric Company (ERC) to refund over P9.5 billion to its over eight million customers.
That translates to a potential P117.22 decrease in the monthly bills for a typical household consuming 200 kWh a month.
On the negative side, the ERC has allowed the National Transmission Corporation (TransCo) to charge an extra P0.1348 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in the feed-in tariff allowance (FIT-All), a pass-through charge meant to subsidize renewable energy (RE) developers.
This meant that the average electricity user consuming 200 kWh will now pay an additional P26.96 in their August bills.
On top of that, ERC has also allowed Meralco to collect P8.709 billion in previously unrecovered pass-through costs to consumers, over a period of three years.
The impact to consumers: another additional P16.96 in their next monthly bills.
Not much of an increase, some would scoff, not to mention that these charges had been “distributed” for a specific period of time, ostensibly to lessen the burden for the Filipino consumer.
But for the average Filipino, the P43.92 that would be added to their monthly bills could easily mean an extra meal for the day or an average commute fare.
How quickly have officials at the ERC forgotten the President’s call to ease the burden on a public already bearing the burden of high inflation and stagnating economy.
Or, perhaps, these new round of “legalized” theft of consumers has just proven what many critics had charged: that the latest SONA was nothing more than lip service aimed at appeasing a public already seething with rage?
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