On electricity and rice

Egay Uy .

AS a sequel to Monday’s column, we, as end users of electricity in the Cepalco franchise area, and similarly in the Moresco-1 service area, have been paying for electricity that we have not consumed. This is because of the take-or-pay provisions in the power supply contracts between these distribution utilities and their respective suppliers of power [measured in kilowatts] and energy [kilowatthours]. This means we pay for electricity that we did not use.

It is just but fair, since nobody should be enriched at the expense of another, that the amounts paid for unused electricity should be returned to consumers.  Engr. Dave Tauli says there ought to be “refunds of payments for unused electricity.” The ordinary electricity consumer will understand this more if Cepalco, and Moresco-1, will have been able to explain this.  And it is easy to quantify, according to Engr. Tauli, so refunding will also be easy.

The generation charge as a component of our electric bills, being a pass-through charge, is billed by the generating company [the Minergy Power Corporation in the case of Cepalco], and is automatically billed and collected by the latter from its customers and remitted to the power supplier.

As end users of electricity we can always be compelled to pay because our power supply will be disconnected if we failed to do.  Conversely, end users should be billed only for electricity they use.

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As a welcome move, the government will implement a suggested retail price for all varieties of rice starting in the last week of October. This was recently announced by the Department of Agriculture. “The agreed SRPs are P39 per kilogram for regular-milled rice, P42 per kilo for well-milled rice, and P44 for long grain rice,” a national daily reported. The SRP is however subject to seasonal adjustment.

Rice retailers will be required to sell four varieties which must be clearly labelled.  This is actually provided for in the Philippine Grains Standardization Program which is supposed to be implemented by the National Food Authority, but it seems nobody is seriously doing it.

Under the PGSP, even price tags have standards. But what we see in the markets are price tags that blatantly defy the standards and regulations under the noses of the NFA inspectors. The NFA will have to seriously check on the provisions of the PGSP and implement it to the letter, otherwise of what good are those standards if they are only good on paper?

The Cagayan de Oro City Price Coordinating Council will be following this through.