833 power firms’ plaints resolved

By Lenie Lectura – January 20, 2025
from Business Mirror

THE Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) revealed last Sunday 833 cases and motions filed by power industry stakeholders were resolved last year.

The number included 484 show-cause orders (SCO).

In these past two years alone, the Commission said it has shown significant progress, achieving a 76-percent resolution rate in 2023 and exceeding 100 percent in 2024, based on the ratio of new cases and motions filed to those resolved within each year.

However, over 90 percent of the ERC’s efforts were spent addressing case backlog from previous years, resulting in resolution rates of only 8 percent in 2023 and 4 percent in 2024, respectively, of cases and motions filed and also resolved within the same year.

The Commission recently launched its “Energy Virtual One-Stop Shop (Evoss) Dashboard,” an internal tool that will allow the Commission to monitor approved, pending and terminated cases in real-time and comply with the timelines set in the Evoss Act. The tool is equipped with a case management system and a pending cases aging section.

“The ability to properly track and manage cases is central to ensuring the speedy disposition of cases in the Commission,” ERC Chairman and CEO Monalisa C. Dimalanta was quoted in a statement as saying. “Now that we have a centralized case inventory system as well as digital tools to comply with EVOSS timelines, we are breaking down long-standing silos within the agency that have limited our ability to deliver on our mandate in a timely and efficient manner.”

Dimalanta added that the ERC has “been sharing these numbers to our stakeholders for the sake of transparency because we recognize that accountability begins with us.”

“As a regulatory body, we cannot demand accountability from the entities we oversee unless we adhere to the same principles in our own operations,” she said.

The ERC reassured the public of its commitment to address the long-standing challenge of significant case backlog, demonstrated by key measures the ERC has implemented within the agency in the last two years to reduce and ultimately eliminate cases that have remained pending, some of which stood unresolved for more than a decade.