Light bulb makers urge gov’t to speed up alternate program

The Philippine Lighting Industry Association Inc. (PLIA) is urging the Department of Energy to speed up the formation of an alternate program to replace the soon-to-be-abolished Efficient Lighting Initiative (ELI).

In a letter to Energy Secretary Vincent S. Perez, a copy of which was obtained by The STAR, PLIA president Stephen Yu said there is a need to fast-track the formation of the so-called Philippine Efficient Lighting Market Transformation (PELMAT) project immediately after the termination of the ELI program next month.

Yu has expressed fears that the absence of such a program will again open the doors to the proliferation of illegal activities against compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs).

"The board and members of PLIA are greatly bothered about the possibility of having no program in place through several months. This gap between projects will undoubtedly create a vacuum in the market, which may result in the reversal of the market transformation that ELI has painstakingly accelerated during its over three years of program implementation in the Philippines," Yu said

The PLIA president added: "One such reversal is the predicted return of substandard (that is, below the Philippine National Standards) CFL since traders of these illegal products realize that there is no longer a program in place to combat black market proliferation of low-quality lighting products."

ELI, which is an initiative of the World Bank’s International Finance Corp. (IFC) using the Global Environmental Fund (GEF), was originally scheduled to end in December 2002, which was later adjusted to April of this year to properly close down ongoing market transformation activities.

Yu said that with the expectation the successor program, the United Nation Development Program/GEF-funded PELMAT project, would be approved by the GEF council by May 2003 and started by the DOE not later than Oct. 1, 2003, the ELI has been extended to the end of September this year.

"It is our understanding that now, due to further delays in the GEF approval process of the PELMAT project, we can now expect a substantial time gap with no efficient lighting program in the Philippines from Oct. 1 to the time the PELMAT could realistically kick off," he said.

According to Yu, the DOE, being the government agency supervising the power and energy sector, should see to it that there is healthy competition in the lighting industry.

"PLIA sincerely feels that something needs to be done immediately to get the PELMAT program started and professionally managed. So that further delays do not hurt our industry and the Filipino consumers," he said.