WESM’s IEMO president to be known today
By Myrna M. Velasco – June 24, 2018, 10:00 PM
from Manila Bulletin
The operations of the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) will have its historical turning point today, June 25, with the scheduled election of the first president of the segregated Independent Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (IEMO), a reform process that has been delayed for 12 years already for the country’s restructured electricity sector.
The election of Chief Executive for the WESM-designated independent market operator will be chosen from a seven-member board that shall be securing the nod of Energy Secretary Alfonso G. Cusi.
As gathered, the most feasible candidates are the seven incorporators of the IEMO, provided that none of the four who were nominated in the Philippine Electricity Market (PEM) Board would want to be elected as independent director in the governing body that shall be reconstituted immediately after the election of the IEMO President.
Four of the incorporators were nominated for independent director-posts in the PEM governing board – namely WESM Transition Committee President Oscar Ala, Chief Operating Officer Francis Saturnino Juan, as well as transition committee members Rauf Tan and Jose Mari Bigornia, so they will have to decide if they would want to be affiliated with the IEMO or the PEM governing body.
The other three incorporators of the IEMO, also referred as IMO, are lawyers Jose Layug Jr., Ann Garcia-Matibag and Carol Tan; who are considered also as contenders and will be joining the election for the IEMO president.
In the afternoon, it was noted that the election of the 15 new directors of the PEM Board shall also be carried out– and this will mark the historic exit of Energy Secretary Cusi from the board where the government had exercised oversight on for more than a decade.
According to Juan, the sectoral representatives in the PEM Board may “just go through the process of confirmations because they just have the exact number of nominees for their respective slots,” while he noted that the real tough contest will be on the four independent directors because there are 20 candidates slugging it out on just four board seats.
This event at the WESM is reckoned in the industry as a “landmark development” because it is only this time that the government would finally be letting out its grip in the market.
On the actual takeover of the IMO, however, it may not be as immediate as it appears to be, according to Juan, because there would still be structural and organizational processes that they will have to work on.
For one, he said “there’s a need to complete staffing process at the IMO, then it also needs to open a bank account, undertake and sign employment contracts, among others.”
By and large, Juan averred that the organizational transition will take some months more before the IMO could finally be spun off from PEMC and for it to truly function as independent operator of the electricity spot market.
