Pedestrians walk past a Meralco sign in suburban Manila in this file photo. AFP FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—The Manila Electric Company (Meralco) maintained before the Supreme Court that on top of their mind in imposing the rate hike is the consumers, the reason why they went to the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) instead of automatically imposing additional generation charge.
During Tuesday’s oral argument, Meralco lawyer Victor Lazatin said they went to the ERC because the charge that they will impose was extraordinarily high.
“Effectively, we wanted to cushion the impact to consumers,” Lazatin said.
Also, Lazatin said other proactive remedial measures that they took to mitigate effect of the increase due to the Malampaya shutdown include contracting Therma Mobile Inc. (TMO) which would address the supply of electricity in case of the shutdown.
Lazatin further pointed that even with the aberrant spike in the December 2013 electric bill, the annual average generation charge is still lower than the annual average generation charge in 2012.
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