ERC to appeal ruling on San Miguel-Meralco deal
By Alena Mae S. Flores – May 28, 2024, 9:25 pm
from manilastandard.net
The Energy Regulatory Commission said Tuesday it will appeal the Supreme Court’s ruling dismissing its petition on the rate hike petition by San Miguel Corp.’s subsidiaries and Manila Electric Co.
“We are deeply saddened by the Supreme Court’s dismissal of our petition by minute resolution. We will file a motion for reconsideration through the OSG [Office of the Solicitor General] so we can at least have our day in court,” ERC chairperson and chief executive Monalisa Dimalanta said in a statement.
“We know that what we have now is a very small window of hope, but our mandate requires us to pursue this, to uphold the rule of law, sanctity of contracts and consumer interests,” she said.
The ERC received from the OSG on May 27, 2024 a copy of the minute resolution dated April 23, 2024 issued by the First Division of the Supreme Court denying its petition for review of the decision of the Court of Appeals (CA) and its resolution denying the regulator’s motion for reconsideration.
The CA in its June 27, 2023 decision overturned the commission’s denial of the price adjustments on the power supply agreements of Meralco and two generation companies of San Miguel—South Premiere Power Corp. (SPPC) for the Ilijan plant and San Miguel Energy Corp. (SMEC) for the Sual plant.
The Supreme Court, in its one-paragraph resolution, held that “[it] resolved to deny the petition for failure of petitioner to sufficiently show that the Court of Appeals committed any reversible error in the challenged joint decision and resolution as to warrant the exercise of this Court’s discretionary appellate jurisdiction.”
The ERC said the resolution did not include any discussion of the three fundamental issues raised for the court’s determination in the petition for review by the OSG on whether or not the CA was correct in issuing a restraining order and injunction despite the non-filing by SPPC/SMEC of a motion for reconsideration with the commission and whether or not the CA was correct in overruling the commission’s determination of facts and compliance with the power supply agreements (PSAs).
The ERC ruled in November 22 that there was no legal and factual basis to grant the requests made jointly by Meralco and SPPC and Meralco and SMEC to increase the rates charged to Meralco consumers under the respective PSAs.
The commission, in its ruling, apart from considering the impact on power rates of the requested price adjustments, relied on the express language of the PSAs that stipulated a straight or fixed tariff of around P4 per kilowatt-hour for 10 years and that allowed for very limited instances of permissible rate adjustments, of which the particular events cited by SPPC and SMEC were not included in the PSA-defined term “change in circumstances.”
SPPC and SMEC brought the matter to the CA for review without filing for a motion for reconsideration on the commission’s rulings.
The appellate court ruled in favor of SPPC/SMEC on June 27, 2023 and held that the majority of the commission erred in denying the motion for price adjustment, saying that the commission’s orders denied SPPC/SMEC’s right to due process.
The ERC brought the matter to the SC on Feb. 29, 2024 to appeal several grounds, citing error on the part of the CA when it granted SPPC/SMEC’s separate petitions for certiorari, which the commission said is not the proper remedy to assail ERC’s orders, and the CA’s misapplication of the “change in circumstance” clauses of the PSAs.
