SOMEONE (I have forgotten who), said that real news is what someone does not want you to print.
By this definition, there is plenty of news in the Lapsus Calami column.
I am less enamoured with articles by a named journalist which in fact is very substantially (90-100 percent) simply a press release from a well-known company. The business sections of our national broadsheets are full of such space-fillers. It is preferable when a journalist makes an appropriately cynical interpretation of the company’s rosy-glow puffery.
A recent example came from Global Business Power (GBP) praising itself for two of its subsidiaries Panay Energy Development Corp. (PEDC) and Cebu Energy Development Corp. (CEDC) for complying with Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) rules and regulations.
PEDC topped the list of coal-fired generators with the highest compliance rating by the Philippine Electricity Market Corp. (PEMC) with a rating of 98.72 percent for the period covering June 2019 to June 2020.
CEDC was also praised because it had a rating of 93.92 percent.
I suppose that when we see ratings of over 90 percent, we think in terms of students’ scores in school assessments where anything over 90 percent is deemed to be excellent.
My assessment is based on the difference between the mark obtained and 100 percent. This gives an indication of the degree of non-compliance of companies operating in conjunction with WESM.
On this basis, PEDC has a non-compliance rating of 1.28 percent (100 percent less 98.72 percent) and CEDC is 6.08 percent (100 percent less 93.92 percent) non-compliant.
CEDC, therefore, is approaching five times more non-compliant than PEDC. It would seem, therefore, that GBP should carry out an audit of CEDC to establish why it is significantly worse that PEDC in terms of WESM compliance.
For us, the end-users of electricity, WESM is one of the few bright spots in what is a difficult area where meeting the public interest is low on the list of priorities of those from whom we buy our electricity.
This is not a happy state of affairs when we, in practice, have no choice as to where we buy our electricity. Furthermore, electricity being a product which is essential, we are entitled to expect that those who administer the industry are effective in curtailing aspects which may put the end-user at a disadvantage.
From 1-15 October 2020, the average price that the local electricity supplier paid WESM was P2.19 per kilowatt-hour. Most local suppliers, with the support of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) have largely ignored WESM and, instead, have entered into disadvantageous bilateral contracts, not demonstrably in the public interest, in which end users pay, typically over P10 per kWh.
We recommend a thorough audit, to be carried out by the Commission on Audit (COA), to engender fair electricity prices to the hapless consumers./PN
