Will Filipino consumers get justice soon against the surge in electricity rates? Not likely, given the clashing actions of government bodies in dealing with it.
The Senate committee on energy held one hearing last week. After which, chairman Sergio Osmeña III cleared the power generators of price gouging.
Not so fast, Press Sec. Herminio Coloma butted in, for the Dept. of Energy still is investigating the matter. Begun in Dec., the probe is if coal, diesel and steam plants colluded in sales rates when the cheaper natural gas facility shut down for maintenance. Also being looked into is if the distributors did everything to cushion retail prices.
Were it a habitual public haranguer, the Supreme Court too might have told off the Senate. For it has yet to decide on the petitions to stop the biggest distributor, Meralco, from collecting steep pass-on rates.
In the House of Reps, meantime, are calls to oust Energy Regulatory Commission chairwoman Zenaida Ducut. It seemed from her demeanor in the televised Senate event that she knows not her regulatory duties. Only now, after her agency permitted the retail rate increases, is she saying that the generators must first be investigated. Ducut, a former congresswoman, was a midnight appointee to the ERC of past President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who has inherited her electoral district.
Osmeña exonerated not only the generators but also Ducut — who will now belatedly investigate them. The senator blamed Energy Sec. Jericho Petilla for the sudden rise in generation and distribution prices. Allegedly Petilla did nothing about the impending supply crunch despite notice of the natural gas shutoff a year ahead. He will be grilled in the next Senate committee hearing this week.
Back to the ERC, how will Ducut’s office examine the distributors, when it is itself being examined by Petilla? How can Ducut be ousted for incompetence, when the approval of rate hikes was collegial — by her and two commissioners? The wrong of one was the wrong of all.
One of the commissioners, appointed only last July by President Noynoy Aquino to a seven-year term, is lawyer Josefina Patricia Magpale Asirit. She is the daughter of Aquino’s Liberal Party mate, Cebu Vice Gov. Agnes Magpale. She is also a niece of Cabinet Secretary Rene Almendras, a college buddy and most trusted aide of Aquino.
Malacañang is noted for defending and retaining even deadwood appointees. Its first statement during the public outcry was that the power rate surge was unavoidable.
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After it was proved that big-time rice trader Davidson Bangayan is also the Goliath of rice smuggling David Tan, comes another stinker:
Agriculture Sec. Proceso Alcala and National Food Authority chief Orlan Calayag not only know Bangayan/Tan. They also have favored him many times with special rice-import permits.
Such permits are supposed to be granted only to rice farmers’ cooperatives, or in small quantities to food processors that use special grain varieties. Bangayan is neither a farmer nor food processor. During last week’s Senate hearing on rice smuggling, he swore to be a scrap-metal dealer and import consolidator.
Special permits of the NFA, which Alcala and Calayag control, were granted again and again to Starcraft Corp. Senators, Customs officials, and even his lawyer aver that Bangayan owns the company, although his name does not appear in official records.
Alcala and Calayag denounce Bangayan as a rice smuggler and cartelist, but deny knowing him. The repeated grants of special permits show otherwise.
Calayag reported in writing to the House of Reps last year the five private firms given special import permits in 2013 for 163,000 tons of rice. Heading the list was Starcraft. The STAR last Monday quoted this from documents shared by Willy Marbella, deputy secretary general of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP).
Starcraft topped the list of grantees of NFA special permits at least two other times. This was revealed Tuesday in the DZMM radio show of multi-awarded broadcaster Ted Failon. Interviewee Rafael Mariano, KMP sec-gen and former sectoral congressman, cited congressional papers.
During the Senate hearing, Justice Sec. Leila de Lima detailed Bangayan’s modus operandi. Allegedly he would offer commissions to farmers’ co-ops accredited by the NFA to import. The co-op officers let him fill up the bidding entries and price for the NFA import quotas. Bangayan also reused expired NFA permits to bring in more than the allowed volume of rice, for delivery to the cartel, de Lima said.
Bangayan retorted that he merely consolidated the co-ops, which had no capital to import the multibillion-pesos of rice allotted to them. But de Lima’s narrative showed him to be rigging the NFA biddings.
Such rigging, as well as the reuse of special permits, could only have been pulled off with the collusion of NFA insiders. The NFA had devised the “farmers-as-importers†scheme during the Arroyo tenure. Supposedly it was to help the poor planters, although the NFA knew they had no capital. Insiders pointed the co-op officers to financiers like Bangayan. The present NFA administration continued the racket.
Customs chief John Philip Sevilla also referred to Starcraft and Bold Bidder Marketing, another NFA import licensee, as smugglers. He said the two firms have managed to obtain court injunctions against the confiscation of their contraband in Davao and Batangas ports.
What the NFA does not allot to co-ops, it imports by itself. The 705,200 tons that it bought from Vietnam last year allegedly was overpriced by $100 a ton, or P3.2 billion in all. Lawyer Argee Guevara has charged Alcala and Calayag with plunder.
Despite the imports, there was a rice shortage from June to Dec., with “cheap†NFA rice retailing at P28-P33 a kilo, from the usual P22. Alcala and Calayag blamed it on smugglers-cartelists, but identified and prosecuted no one.
The jig is up, KMP’s Marbella and Mariano said. The agriculture and food-security chiefs gave import permits to the cartelists-smugglers, but now deny knowing those who have been exposed.
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Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ (882-AM).
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