INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines — Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) chief Monalisa Dimalanta on Tuesday said the agency is “working hard to ensure” that a rate reset will be made for Manila Electric Company (Meralco).
Dimalanta made the pronouncement in reaction to a consumer advocate, who blasted the ERC for disregarding Meralco’s rate reset after it granted Meralco’s request to withdraw its rate reset application on October 30, declaring Meralco’s fifth rate regulatory period as a “lapsed period.”
“That 30 October decision of the Commission did allow for the withdrawal of Meralco’s Application but required a re-filing to cover an updated period (2025-2028),” Dimalanta told INQUIRER.net.
“So, there will be a reset, and this Commission is, in fact, working hard to ensure that a reset will be completed as soon as possible,” she added.
READ: ERC chief returns to a Meralco rate hike dilemma
Under a rate reset, a regulated entity such as Meralco is obliged to submit to the ERC its spending and proposed projects over a period, which will then be used as the basis of the distribution rate that will be passed on to consumers.
In a separate statement, Consumer advocate Romeo Junia told off the ERC for disregarding Meralco’s rate reset, a process that could have alleviated consumers’ plight in energy consumption.
He noted that Meralco’s last rate reset was way back in June 2011, which should have only been applicable up to June 2015—with resets happening once in every 4-year regulatory cycle.
“Nine years from 2016 when a reset rate should have been in place, no proper and timely rate review has been done because ERC did not issue the pertinent rules or, having issued them, is unable to implement and enforce them properly,” said Junia.
Because of this, Junia said Meralco has been collecting merely recomputed rates.
“The rate reset mess ERC has created is living proof of ERC’s gross incompetence for which ERC has not been held accountable. Lamentably, it is the public that suffers the burden of unverified and non-validated unjust rates,” he said.
According to Junia, the current rate of Meralco is merely an average of Meralco’s third regulatory period “because of ERC’s egregious and unexplained failure to issue the required rules for reset.”
It was on March 16, 2022 when Meralco filed its application for rate reset covering regulatory years (RYs) 2023-2026 but then applied to withdraw that application in September 2023, citing ERC’s unexplained failure to conduct rate reset in a proper and timely manner.
ERC denied the motion on April 16, 2024, but then reversed and issued the latest order granting withdrawal, dumping two more years to the so-called lapsed period.
However, Junia noted that the ERC “cannot dump two more RYs on a Lapsed Period thoroughly cut out of any legal leg to stand on by the Chairperson’s disquisition on the legal infirmities and the lack of due process in the 3-vote majority decision.”
“As highlighted by the Commission in the 16 April order, ‘the resetting of Meralco rates has been long-overdue’ and allowing withdrawal and refiling will exacerbate instead of alleviate consumers’ plight in a rate regime that is deficient and in perpetual default on holding Meralco accountable for its unverified and non-validated rates,“ Junia said. – with Lisbet K. Esmael