The latest Meralco electricity rate hike is a cruel blow to millions of Filipino families already struggling under soaring prices of food, transportation, housing, and other basic necessities. At a time when wages remain far behind the rising cost of living, forcing consumers to pay even more for electricity is unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive.
As usual, Meralco insists that the increase is caused by higher generation and transmission charges, rising fuel costs, and higher prices in the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM).
What it doesn’t say is that the whole power industry has become a government-sanctioned oligopoly of billionaires using every opportunity to suck blood from the people.
It is unfair and unjust for ordinary consumers to be made to pay for deliberate market failures, fuel price volatility, supply shortages, poor planning, monopoly pricing, or other risks that industry players cause and should themselves bear. This includes the latest 34-centavo increase imposed by Meralco on its residential customers.
Under the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA), virtually every cost increase, however questionable, is automatically passed on to the public, allowing private power monopolies to rake in billions in profits at the people’s expense. This anomaly has become the norm under EPIRA’s privatized and deregulated power regime, making electricity in the Philippines among the highest in Asia.
Worse, the government has overtaxed electricity, with a regressive 12% Value Added Tax even on system losses, allowing the government to benefit from windfall taxes with every price increase.
Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, therefore, demands that the power oligopoly – Aboitiz Power, San Miguel Global Power, First Gen, ACEN, Meralco/MGen, and NGCP – be made to absorb the current rate hike and the rising cost of power. It is time that they bear the burden of their greed.
We likewise demand that the VAT on power be removed or substantially reduced.
These are stopgap measures that can provide immediate relief to our suffering people, even as we continue to demand the repeal of EPIRA and the nationalization of the power industry