House to ERC: Resolve issues, we’ll restore your budget

MANILA, Philippines — A day after giving the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) a P1,000 budget, leaders of the House of Representatives said yesterday they are willing to restore its funding to P351 million for 2018, provided it could resolve the issues and controversies hounding the agency before the end of the budget process.

“But until then, they will have P1,000,” Davao City Rep. Karlo Nograles, appropriations committee chairman, said.

Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian appealed to the House to reconsider its decision to drastically cut the ERC budget as he cautioned his fellow legislators of its potentially devastating impact on the stability of the power sector.

“There was a general sentiment among House members that the ERC really needs to fix a lot of problems besetting their office, so the Speaker and the House saw it fit to give them just a thousand pesos for next year,” he said without elaborating.

Zamboanga City Rep. Celso Lobregat, appropriations committee vice chairman in charge of the budgets of energy agencies, said it was Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez who asked him to seek a P1,000 funding for ERC.

He did not explain why Alvarez wanted to cripple the agency by giving it such a small budget, which is not even enough for the cost-of-living allowance of a single employee.

However, it is believed that the House leadership’s move was in support of President Duterte’s wish for the abolition of ERC.

The President has repeatedly said if he could not abolish the regulatory agency, he would ask Congress to deny it funding.

He has also asked ERC chairman Jose Vicente Salazar and all commissioners to resign.

Malacañang has suspended the ERC chief for alleged insubordination. It has asked the four commissioners to explain their recent “expensive trips” allegedly funded by entities they regulate.

Ironically, it was Duterte who proposed a P351-million budget for ERC for 2018.

The proposal is part of the P3.8-trillion 2018 outlay the President submitted to Congress last July 24.

For his part, Gatchalian, who chairs the Senate committee on energy, expressed concern the massive budget cut would severely hamper the ERC’s ability to fulfill its functions and send a bad signal to energy investors and breed uncertainty in terms of electricity supply and power rates.

“It would be better to aggressively pursue administrative and criminal charges against erring ERC officials instead of punishing the entire agency as a whole for the sins of the higher-ups,” Gatchalian said.

He noted that several cases against Salazar and the ERC commissioners are pending before various bodies. 

The senator also sought the support of House members for his Senate Bill 490, also known as the ERC Governance Act of 2017, seeking reforms at the ERC.

Road Board must stay 

The opposition bloc in the House also called on Alvarez to reconsider his plans of abolishing the graft-ridden Road Board, saying the move could be too harsh despite the presence of so-called bad eggs in the agency.   

“While we recognize the good intentions of the Speaker, we would like to reiterate the importance of the Road Board in carrying out functions that are beneficial to the motoring public,” House Minority Leader Danilo Suarez maintained. 

Suarez, among the authors of the Road Board charter, said the Road Board was the “product of a well-crafted and well-intentioned law, but like a majority of our laws, the real problem is in the implementing agency.”  – With Delon Porcalla, Artemio Dumlao