The Manila Times
MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Imee Marcos called for the immediate amendment of the Electric Power Industry Reform (Epira) law to stop the exorbitant charges imposed by Meralco on its consumers. The senator deplored that consumers are reeling from rising fuel and food prices amid the oil crisis triggered by the Middle East war. "This isn't just about following the law; it's a matter of compassion for the people," Marcos said in a statement. "In the middle of a crisis, it should be the big companies adjusting, not the consumers who are being bled dry by the high cost of electricity," she said. Marcos, a member of the Senate Protect Committee, has joined several lawmakers in questioning Meralco’s "inflated" consumer charges that resulted in higher electricity bills. Senate President Vicente Sotto III earlier reaffirmed his long-standing advocacy for oil sector reforms and filed measures such as the proposed Total Repeal of Oil Deregulation Law and Senate Bill (SB) 1934, or the proposed Philippine Strategic Petroleum Reserve Act. Sotto cited years of legislative efforts aimed at protecting Filipino consumers from volatile fuel prices. He said that his position on oil taxation has remained firm for decades. Marcos raised the need to permanently remove unjust pass-on charges and the "compounded calculation" of system loss. She also called on the Energy Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy to investigate Meralco’s alleged inflated charges. Marcos also questioned pass-on charges such as lifeline rates and senior discounts, which, although useful for some sectors, should not be shouldered by the energy consumers. “Meralco is the biggest utility [firm]. Can’t Meralco just absorb that instead of passing it on to other consumers?" she asked, referring to lifeline and senior discounts. "Why do the small people have to carry the burden for all these discounts?” Marcos said. She also slammed the imposition of value-added tax (VAT) on every component of the bill, including system loss and transmission, which further bloats the total amount. Marcos refuted Meralco's justification that "summer demand" caused the high bills, noting that electricity consumption actually dropped from 2.711 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in February to 2.644 billion kWh this April. Sen. Risa Hontiveros on Monday filed SB 2076, which will remove the VAT on systems loss charges currently being passed on to consumers’ monthly electricity bills. The senator said SB 2076 will amend the National Internal Revenue Code to exclude systems loss charges from transactions subject to VAT. Under the bill, systems loss refers to “the difference between the electrical energy delivered to the distribution system (energy input) and the energy delivered to the residential household consumers (energy output).” She said Filipino consumers should no longer be made to carry the “double burden” of paying for VAT on top of the “already absurd” systems loss charges passed on by electric utilities. "We must immediately end this unfair arrangement, especially now that electricity costs are going up,” Hontiveros said in a statement. She said that VAT is a consumption tax on goods and services. "Systems loss charges — which represent losses in the distribution and delivery of electricity — are neither goods nor services purchased by power consumers." “By removing the VAT on systems loss charges, we are not just making our tax policies more fair and just — we are also providing immediate relief to consumers facing higher electricity bills this summer season,” Hontiveros said. She said that the bill is only the first of her planned package of legislative measures to provide assistance to power consumers, especially low-income households, amid rising costs of basic commodities due to the Middle East war.
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