I don’t know why after these throwing of accusations and blames on why the cost of electricity in the Philippines is high – there are the issues of system loss, cross ownership, WESM, transmission charges, and NPC stranded cost – the President of the Philippines, herself, is not doing her part that is, actually, mandated to her by the Law that she, herself, signed in 2001 to drastically reduced the electricity rates.

Section 35 of Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) or RA 9136 explicitly states that;

The provisions of Section 79 of Commonwealth Act No. 137 (C.A. No. 137) and any law to the contrary notwithstanding, the President of the Philippines shall reduce the royalties, returns and taxes collected for the exploitation of all indigenous sources of energy, including but not limited to, natural gas and geothermal steam, so as to effect parity of tax treatment with the existing rates for imported coal, crude oil, bunker fuel and other imported fuels.
To ensure lower rates for end-users, the ERC shall forthwith reduce the rates of power from all indigenous sources of energy.

However, based on media interviews, the President’s economic adviser categorically deferred the proposal of reducing royalties imposed on Natural Gas and remove taxes on power.

Well, this one example shows that the government, itself, is not serious in doing its part to reduce the power rates. Moreover, their action of doing nothing to reduhttp://www.jcmiras.net/surge/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=112 Jcmiras.Net_02 › Edit — WordPressce the royalties and taxes on power is, obviously, illegal or against the law.
Note: power plants that are using Natural gas are 1500 MW of First Gas (MERALCO IPP) and 1200 MW of Ilijan (NPC-IPP)