Party-list solon hits IMF for meddling in power bill passage

A party-list lawmaker has denounced the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for allegedly meddling with the House in the passage of the controversial power industry restructuring bill.

In a privilege speech, Rep. Loretta Ann Rosales, who represents the militant group Akbayan, disclosed the contents of a letter sent by Markus Rodlauer, chief of the IMF mission in the country, to Rep. Arnulfo Fuentebella (LAMP, Camarines Sur), chairman of the House energy committee.

She said Rodlauer told Fuentebella that "we are disappointed to learn that the 'Electricity Reform Bill' which you have sponsored appears to have run into some further delays in passing through the House of Congress.

"As you are aware, the program supported by the IMF expected passage of this bill before the end of the year (which already represented a significant delay from earlier scheduled)," the IMF representative said.

The letter further stated that the IMF considered it "very important that the House now passes the bill without further delay (before the end of the year)."

Rosales said Rodlauer's letter to Fuentebella was an insult not only to the energy committee chairman but to the entire chamber.

She said lawmakers are answerable to the people who elected them and who will judge them in next year's elections, not to the IMF or any international lending institution.

"The House is not a rubber stamp to approve what some government functionaries promise the IMF," added the sectoral lawmaker who counts herself with the opposition bloc in the House.

She also lambasted Rodlauer's implicit threat that the IMF would withhold financial assistance to the Philippines should there be further delay in the passage of the power sector restructuring measure, which would pave the way for the privatization of the National Power Corp. (Napocor).

"There is a term for this. They call it pure and simple blackmail --blackmail of the vilest, lowest and cheapest kind," she said.

She informed her colleagues that the Asian Development Bank has recently given the Department of Energy a $700,000 grant for the conduct of a study on how consumers would be affected by the sale of Napocor.

"Thus, it would be logical that we wait for the results of this study first, before rushing into the dark," she said.

Passage of the power measure has run into delays largely because of objections raised by many opposition and administration congressmen who claim that the proposed reforms would only result in more power cartels and higher electricity cost for consumers.

Earlier, former senator and now Rep. Ernesto Herrera (LAMP, Bohol) criticized the restructuring measure's authors and sponsors for wanting to socialize "stranded costs" (referring to Napocor's P600 billion loans) and "privatize profits."

He said without its loans, the bulk of which would be assumed by consumers under the bill, Napocor would be earning at least P3 billion a year in clean profits.

"That is the kind of money that makes prospective buyers (of Napocor) salivate," he said.