Meralco power sales up slightly in January-July

MANILA, Philippines - Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), the country’s largest power distribution firm, reported an improvement in its energy sales in the first seven months of the year.

Meralco president Jose de Jesus told reporters that sales in gigawatthours (gwh) grew 0.1 percent to 15,396 gwh as of end-July 2009, recovering from a – 0.5 percent contraction in the same period last year.

“The decline in the sales volume has been decelerating. While there were forecasts of flat sales growth this year, there were signs hopefully that sales will eventually improve. We see improvement in the decline of sales volume one percentage point every month,” he said.

De Jesus noted that from -18.7 percent in January, the drop in energy sales narrowed down to -12.4 percent in February; -10.2 percent in March; -9.6 percent in April; -8.4 percent in May; -7 percent in June and -5.9 percent in July.

“If indeed the economy will continue to recover, our sales almost correlates with the growth in the economy – so while we are forecasting a flat growth, we are hoping sales growth will be positive. There are signs it could become positive. The trend in industrial sales started in January with -18.7 percent and we’re now down to 5.9 percent in July. And every month since January, it’s been improving by about 1.6 percent. Industrial sector accounts for 26.7 percent of Meralco sales,” he said.

As of end-July 2009, Meralco’s industrial sales reached 4,111 gwh from 4,366 gwh in the same period in 2008.

“The overall also turned positive for the first time even though it’s very small. The re-entry of self-generating companies helped but not very significant yet,” he said.

The Meralco official, however, said they still expect the company’s sales to remain flat for the year.

He noted that the drop in industrial sales of Meralco were due to the closure of some industrial firms over the past months because of the impact of the global financial crisis.

Meralco’s kilowatthour sales to the manufacturing sector for the period January to July 2009 contracted 10.6 percent.

Electrical machinery, which accounts for 25.3 percent of Meralco sales and includes the semiconductor manufacturers, registered a drop of 19.4 percent for the seven-month period.