Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) was in Cebu last Wednesday afternoon after a short trip from Bacolod City for her tour of the “Cyber Corridor” and in Cebu, she went to the AsiaTown IT Park for the opening of Qualfon Cebu Philippines. Qualfon operates contact centers in Monterrey and Chihuahua, Mexico, Costa Rica and Buenos Aires and Chicago USA.
On hand to meet the President was Cebu Governor Gwen F. Garcia and Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña who just arrived from the US for his medical check up. Mayor Osmeña gave the welcome remarks, while Cebu Educational Development Foundation for Information Technology (CEDFIT) chairman Boni Belen gave a PowerPoint presentation that literally had the President shouting wow! That from 850 software developers in 2001, Cebu’s IT Industry now has 7,000 software developers!
That Cebu has once more topped the Tholons Survey as the top 50 BPO emerging destinations for 2009 was something that the President was so proud of when she made her speech about the Cyber Corridor. The last time the President was in Cebu was the other Sunday and she was in tears for the funeral of the late Press Secretary Cerge Remonde. But the good news of the IT Industry in Cyber Corridor and Cebu has buoyed her spirits!
The President added that this is her government’s way of spreading development away from the already congested Metro Manila. More importantly, the IT industry is totally a legacy of the Arroyo Administration as she started it (her daughter Lulli stayed in Cebu in the beginning) … nurtured it and thanks to the President’s unwavering efforts, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) has save the Philippine economy when many manufacturing concerns like Cebu’s furniture industry virtually collapsed on the onslaught of the competition of China. This is Pres. Arroyo’s true legacy for the country and I hope she gets recognized for her effort to make this work!
* * *
Just when the month of February came in and ushered the Chinese New Year a.k.a. the Year of the Tiger instead of lunging forward in our economy, business in Cebu started experiencing rolling brownouts, just like what’s happening in Metro Manila because a few power plants had to go on their Preventive Maintenance System (PMS) in preparation for a brownout free May 2010 elections. But this was hardly unexpected as Cebuano businessmen were already forewarned about the expected shortage in power, thanks to the fact that only a few power plants opened in the last five years.
But there are palliatives that have been put in place by Cebu Gov. Gwen F. Garcia and in order to find out whether these pre-planned systems have been put in place, she called for an emergency meeting with the stakeholders in the power industry, like the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), the Visayan Electric Company (VECO) and the National Power Corporation (NPC) together with the business groups from the Cebu Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Inc. the Mandaue Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Inc. and the Cebu Business Club in her office.
It turned out that the Cebu Thermal Plant shut down its 50MW unit for PMS starting Jan. 23 and is expected to be done by Feb. 23. Again, the PMS for this plant was delayed because the business groups wanted a brownout free Christmas and in fairness we did enjoy a problem-free Christmas season. But now we have to bite the bullet and suffer through these brownouts. We were expected to have a 185MW shortage a few days ago, but thanks to the Interruptible Load Shedding (ILS) program put in place by VECO, plus the contribution of the Luzon grid of 126MW, Cebu only experience a 31MW shortfall.
Thanks to CEMEX Cement Plant in Naga, Cebu that participated in that program giving their 12MW excess power (hopefully, this would be increased to 20MW) it eased our power shortage a bit. Conditions will be like this for most of February until the first 70MW “Clean Coal” power plant of the Cebu Energy Development Corp. (CEDC) in Sangi, Toledo City would be on stream. As for the Kepco Coal fired Power plant, they are slated to be operational by May 2011 yet.
There is no question that Cebu’s economic growth has fueled a lot of demand for power and the suppliers just cannot keep up. Add also the economic growth of most of the Visayas, like Bohol, Iloilo or Bacolod whose power plants are already old and decrepit…we need to really call for a Visayas wide Power Summit so we can come up with the real supply and demand picture for the Visayas up to the year 2020 so we can encourage more investors to open more power plants. Pres. Arroyo who sat beside me during the media interview in AsiaTown agreed that this needs to be done soon.
* * *
For e-mail responses to this article, write to vsbobita@mo-pzcom.com or vsbobita@gmail.com. His columns can be accessed through www.philstar.com.