Foreign loans eyed to finance P4.4-B Leyte-Bohol transmission project

The Leyte-Bohol transmission project will need P4.4 billion in financing mainly from foreign lending institutions before the entire Visayas grid can be fully linked to the National Grid sometime in 2003.

Its completion will be undertaken in two stages, according to the National Power Corp. (Napocor), the project proponent.

Stage 1 will entail energizing a 69-kilovolt (kV) transmission line, which will be ungraded to 138 kV by the year 2003 or part of the second phase of the project.

The initial stage has a project cost of P2.3 billion, and the funding will come from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) under the 21st Yen Loan Package. The consortium of Kanematsu Corp. and Nissho Iwai Corp. has been tapped to undertake the transmission project.

It will involve a 17-kilometer submarine cable running from the Guadalupe cable terminal station or (CTS) in Leyte to the Tugas CTS in C.P. Garcia in Bohol. Electricity will come from the rich steamfields in Leyte.

Napocor president Federico E. Puno said that the completion of the Leyte-Bohol transmission project would form the final link in the transmission backbone of the Visayas grid. "It will allow the island-province of Bohol to share in the overall reserve capacity of the Visayas region, and to tap cheap geothermal power from Napocor’s Tongonan plant in Leyte," Puno added. – Ted Torres