Electricity consumers in metropolitan Cebu should now expect an increase in their bills after the Energy Regulatory Commission approved the petition of the Visayan Electric Company Inc. for the recovery of its Incremental Currency Exchange Rate Adjustment (ICERA).
When? VECO was not yet sure, said the company’s spokesperson Ethel Natera, as the management has been still discussing on the exact date it will be carried out. VECO has just received the copy of the ERC order only last month, she said.
The rise in power rates that VECO is not exactly due to the increase in the prices of fuel and other basic commodities but due to the ICERA, a mechanism that tackles the effects of the fluctuations in international currency exchange rates that the electric company needs to recover.
The ERC, in its decision dated last May 28, but was docketed only last July 10, has authorized VECO to recover its ICERA amounting to over P22.78 million that had accumulated since 1984, or at P0.0147 per kiloWatt-hour (kWh).
Natera said the adjustment, which will be reflected in the consumers’ bill, is very minimal as it is only equivalent to one cent per kilowatt hour.
“For example, if a consumer consumes 100 kWh a month, there will be an additional P1 increase for the 100 kWh consumed,” Natera said.
The ERC order stated that VECO is authorized to collect the ICERA recovery from its next billing cycle and will continue until such time that the full amount needed shall have been recovered.
VECO has an under-recovery of P9.8 million for the month of November 2004, P5.85 million for February 2005, P4.26 million for August 2005, P1.3 million for February 2006, and P1.5 million for August 2006.
The ERC, however, directed VECO to submit, every 20th of the month, a schedule showing its monthly recovery of ICERA with the corresponding beginning and remaining balances.
VECO has filed on October 27 last year at the ERC a petition for the recovery of its ICERA with a “prayer for provisional authority.”
The petition appealed for automatic recovery of its foreign exchange losses, arising from its Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund loan, from the date of the filing of the petition until such time a new currency exchange rate adjustment is approved by the ERC
The P0.0147 per kWh recovery is relatively lower by P0.0601 per kWh than the P0.0748 per kWh originally asked by VECO from the commission.
ERC said this is so because VECO used the actual kWh sales for the year 2005 to compute for the ICERA rate, while VECO used the yearly kWh sales for January to June 2006.
VECO, the country’s second largest private electric utility, is currently serving 291,962 consumers in the cities of Cebu, Mandaue, and Talisay and in five municipalities of Metro Cebu. — RAE