Napocor to improve collection from delinquent accounts

The National Power Corp. (Napocor) expects to improve its collection from delinquent customers by 40 to 50 percent from the present level of only 21 percent.

Napocor OIC-president and chief executive officer Roland S. Quilala, in a press briefing, said as of end-March 2002, the company’s overdue accounts from both industrial customers and electric cooperatives stood at P13.5 billion.

"We have been doubling our effort to collect these overdue accounts. We have been intensifying our collection efforts and we will not hesitate to disconnect those customers that will not pay on time," Quilala said.

Due to its aggressive collection campaign, the state-owned power generation firm has collected more than P200 million from delinquent customers over the past few days.

From March 25 to April 3, this year alone, Genco 6 (Southern Luzon) of Napocor collected P196 million out of its total P1.6 billion collectibles.

Quilala said the Albay Electric Cooperative (Aleco) is set for disconnection if it fails to pay P5.9 million on or before April 11.

He said the problem of huge collectibles from electric co-ops could be attributed to the poor financial management of these small distribution utilities.

At present, Napocor is evaluating which of the electric co-ops would be disconnected from its services. – Donnabelle Gatdula