NGCP seeks recovery of P87.7 billion in project costs

MANILA, Philippines — The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) wants to collect around P87.7 billion in overdue recoveries from two big-ticket projects completed this year.

This followed the full energization of the P20.9-billion Mariveles-Hermosa-San Jose 500-kilovolt (kV) facility last Sunday and the P67-billion Cebu-Negros-Panay (CNP) 230-kV backbone project in April.

The NGCP spent P87.9 billion for these two transmission line projects, but the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) only allowed the recovery of P201.78 million, or less than one percent of the project costs.

“The NGCP has not yet recovered a lot. We hope the regulators will allow us to collect what we have spent on these big projects,” NGCP spokesperson Cynthia Alabanza said at a press conference yesterday.

The Mariveles-Hermosa-Bataan line has a full capacity of 8,000 megawatts and can accommodate additional power generation for the grid to prevent Luzon-wide interruptions.

Out of the invested amount to complete this project, the NGCP was able to collect only P25.78 million.

For the CNP project, meanwhile, the power grid operator only recovered P176 million.

Alabanza also clarified the wrong impression that the NGCP was collecting charges for projects that have not been utilized yet.

“In the case of the Mariveles-Hermosa-San Jose and CNP projects, we infused huge capital for those facilities. They are now at full energization and utilization,” she noted.

The spokesperson is hoping the ERC will act on the petition they filed regarding the overdue recoveries, while at the same time finding ways not to hurt consumers.

In a Viber message, ERC chairman and CEO Monalisa Dimalanta said the NGCP included the unrecovered amounts in its fourth regulatory period (4RP) reset filing, subject to ERC evaluation.

“Although there are also some costs that will traverse into the 5RP (fifth regulatory period) considering the completion of these projects just recently (beyond the 2022 cut-off for 4RP),” Dimalanta said.

The 4RP and 5RP reset processes cover 2016 to 2020 and 2021 and 2025, respectively. The last transmission reset was for the five-year RP covering 2010 to 2015.