SPSB willing to accept franchise service limited to unserved areas

By Lenie Lectura – February 5, 2019
from Business Mirror

SOLAR Para Sa Bayan (SPSB) Corp. on Monday declared it is willing to accept most of the amendments for House Bill 8179, including limiting the scope of its proposed franchise from nationwide to unserved and underserved areas.

During a Senate hearing, SPSB President Leandro Leviste said his group manifested openness to accept the majority of the amendments proposed by the electric utilities, such as regulating the operations of the mini-grid systems.

SPSB’s proposed franchise is to construct, install, establish, operate and maintain distributable power technologies and mini-grid systems. The original scope of the franchise will allow SPSB to operate in all parts of the Philippines.

“We have no intention to enter areas where we are unwelcome, and even at the expense of the viability of this undertaking, we are wiling to limit ourselves to these unserved and underserved areas which the committee deems appropriate,” Leviste said.

Lawmakers have yet to define “unserved” and “undeserved” areas. A proposed list of these unserved and undeserved areas were circulated during the hearing. These are “in the cities and municipalities of Aurora, province of Batangas, Bohol, Cagayan, Camiguin, Compostela Valley, Davao Oriental, Isabela, Masbate, Misamis Occidental, Occidental Mindoro, Palawan, Tawi-Tawi and any unserved area or underserved area throughout the Philippines.”

Leviste reiterated that SPSB’s franchise has no subsidy and is at no cost to the government.

“Our franchise grants us no subsidy whatsoever, comes at no cost to the government, and that is why we thought it would be a very clear debate, because you have electric cooperatives that are spending over P20 billion a year on missionary electricity subsidies, and an estimated P50 billion a year on all kinds of subsidies, yet they are trying to prevent these new options from reaching customers, which will have no brownouts, green energy and no subsidy,” he said.

“Which is why we are also optimistic that the committee will, after hearing all the sides, come down in favor of the vast majority of the attendees of this hearing and the vast majority of the Filipino people who want new choices of electricity and want the passage of this bill at the soonest time,” Leviste said.

He said the qualified third party (QTP) option for missionary electrification has proven ineffective as it is serving less than 0.1 percent of the unenergized households of the more than 12 million Filipinos around the country.

He said that, under QTP, consumers are shouldering highly subsidized rates, “and only through a franchise can we bring this to a meaningful scale by being able to efficiently serve more households, sitios and barangays.”