Meralco chair won’t be meeting with Arroyo

Tag: Electric Control Cabinet

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the Lopezes are not about to bury the hatchet in the white sands of Panglao island—not on Tuesday, anyway.

“I’m not included in that meeting tomorrow,” Manuel M. Lopez, chair of Manila Electric Co., told reporters Monday. “First of all, I’m not invited.”

Ms Arroyo will preside over a rare Cabinet meeting in Bohol Tuesday that will discuss high electricity rates along with soaring food prices.

Although he will not be in Panglao, Lopez said that Meralco would be represented there by its president, Jesus Francisco, board director Christian Monsod and former Supreme Court Justice Jose Vitug.

The Meralco executives will serve as resource persons in the discussions on power rates, according to Malacañang and Meralco officials.

Meralco has come under assault from administration allies in and out of Congress in what analysts describe as a continuation of an administration move to silence the Lopez-controlled radio-television network ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp. that has been critical of Ms Arroyo.

Arroyo probably misinformed

The moves against the utility company include a bid by Winston Garcia, chair of the Government Service Insurance System, to wrest control of Meralco from the Lopezes and break up its franchise for allegedly illegally amassing huge profits from high power rates at the expense of consumers.

On Friday, Lopez said that Ms Arroyo might have been misinformed about Meralco and that he was seeking a meeting with her to clarify the position of the power distributor.

Lopez on Monday spoke briefly to reporters at the sidelines of the stockholders meeting of First Philippine Holdings Corp., the Lopez family’s flagship company for power generation, distribution, infrastructure and manufacturing.

He said he expected proposals to be made during the Cabinet meeting from the energy sector on how to lower power rates. He declined to give further details and instead asked to be excused to attend a meeting after the FPHC’s stockholders’ meeting.

But Oscar Lopez, the family patriarch and FPHC chair, told the FPHC stockholders Monday that Meralco had very little to do and say about the high cost of power.

Little share of retail cost

“This is not because of any desire on its part to shirk its responsibilities or to duck the issue. It is just that as a distribution utility, that portion of the retail cost of electricity accounted for by Meralco is very small compared to the portion of the cost accounted for by the producers or generators of electric power on the one hand and the high voltage transmission of that power,” the FPHC chair said.

He also said that tight government regulations did not allow Meralco to generate “obscene profits,” disputing allegations of its detractors.

“As it is, Meralco has not received its fair share of rate increases over the past 15 years because it has not been popular for government regulators or should I say the head of government to grant it the rate increases it deserves,” Oscar Lopez said.

He reiterated his call that if the government was “genuinely interested” in reducing the high cost of power, then it must reexamine the royalties and taxes imposed on the power sector at every stage of the process that produces electric power from the source fuel such as gas, oil, coal or other sources.

‘Flogging Meralco to death’

“You can flog Meralco to death but it will not reduce the price of gasoline, LPG and other essential fuels that people rely on for their everyday lives and it certainly will not reduce the price and increase the supply of foodstuffs, most particularly rice,” Oscar Lopez said.

Elpi Cuna, Meralco corporate communications director, Monday said that the participation of the Meralco executives in the Panglao meeting had been arranged even before Manuel Lopez arrived from a holiday. He had been on a yearly pilgrimage to Italy, to fulfill a vow to St. Peregrine since he learned he had cancer.

Garcia, a Meralco director representing the GSIS stake in the utility, had lashed out at Lopez’s absence at the Joint Congressional Power Commission hearing last week on Meralco’s high electricity rates.

In the run-up to Meralco’s annual stockholders’ meeting on May 27, Garcia has been drumming up public opinion in favor of wresting management control of Meralco from the Lopez group.