Walk the talk
IN his exclusive interview with a renowned radio personality, Ramon Ang, or simply RSA to some, shared his philosophy in life — that is, to live a simple life and not let money or the abundance of it be used as the barometer of one’s success.
As you cannot bring your money to your grave, he advised everyone not to worship money as if it were God.
“After all, money is meant to be shared,” he said.
Nice words coming from the country’s fourth-richest man. Unfortunately, his latest business moves seem to contradict his own words.
After bagging the Bulacan Airport project, the RSA-led San Miguel Corp. is now training its guns on the rehabilitation of the country’s premier airport — the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
According to sources, RSA formed a conglomerate to bid for the NAIA rehabilitation project with RMN Asian Logistics, RLW Aviation and Incheon, with the respective shares as follows: SMC, 33 percent; RMN, 30 percent; RLW, 27 percent; and Incheon, 10 percent.
Just wondering why RSA is fond of companies sharing the first letter of his initials. Don’t tell me they are all named “Ramon.” Lol!
Anyway, owning up 33 percent of the consortium he put up to bid for the NAIA rehabilitation project doesn’t sit well with the NAIA bid documents as it would qualify him as a GCR, or Greater Capital Region — an entity already considered as an airport concessionaire or an affiliated entity that has a significant interest in the concessionaire, of any of the Greater Capital Region airports, namely the Clark International Airport, the Bulacan Airport or New Manila International Airport, which he has already secured, and the Sangley Point International Airport.
And according to the NAIA bid documents which they have procured, a company that already operates a GCR airport cannot be the sole private concessionaire of the airport. If a GCR operator wants to bid for NAIA, it has to be part of a consortium (which he did), and its ownership stake must be limited to only 20 percent, meaning SMC can only own up to 20 percent of NAIA since it already has the Bulacan Airport.
The funny thing is that even after having read the bid documents, according to reports, during the pre-bidding conference for the P170-billion NAIA project, San Miguel’s delegation was heard wondering aloud why the government was putting restrictions on who could take on the NAIA as if they were being deliberately excluded to favor certain bidders.
For the record, the government put up that limit for the purpose of preventing undue influence being exercised by big businesses that could otherwise end up owning multiple airports and airlines.
Thus, the public bids and awards committee should not have allowed them to participate as it should have been fully aware of SMC’s GCR status.
But unfortunately, RSA seems not to be keen on walking his talk as his SMC is bent on gobbling up NAIA, too.
So, what happened to his statement that one cannot take one’s money to the grave? With all his riches, the soon-to-operate Bulacan Airport, plus the NAIA, if he ever secures it, too, it seems he’s planning to carry all his wealth to his burial chamber and beyond.
Taking a cue from the Panay blackout
Alliance of Concerned Teachers party-list Rep. France Castro is calling on government authorities to take their cue from the recent Panay blackout so that it will not be replicated in other areas, particularly in Metro Manila.
That is what was highlighted in the recent congressional hearing on the three-day outage that hit the islands of Panay, Guimaras and parts of Negros Occidental province.
While the Department of Energy (DoE) is already holding the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines responsible for the outage, Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas is further appealing to the Office of the President, the DoE and the Energy Regulatory Commission to intervene and force the NGCP to compensate for the losses incurred by both the public and private sectors.
“NGCP’s failure to act during the crucial two-hour window was a missed opportunity. As the system’s operator, NGCP must proactively engage with distribution utilities and cooperatives to manage loads and prevent such system collapses,” he said.
The power outage struck after multiple power plants shut down, and at least 452 megawatts of power was lost from the Visayas grid.
Reports said businesses in Iloilo province lost at least P3.5 billion while Iloilo City, the regional capital of Western Visayas, posted P1.5 billion in losses during the three-day blackout.
The ERC and the House of Representatives have started their respective investigations into the Panay outage.
In airing her warning, Castro said that if a similar massive, wide-ranging outage occurs in Metro Manila and other parts of the country, it would be disastrous.
She also raised the question of why in Luzon, particularly in Metro Manila, when there is a generation deficiency, either automatic load dropping or manual load dropping kicks in to support the grid and prevent a total blackout.
Surprisingly, Castro said, the NGCP failed to apply these in Iloilo and Panay.
In Metro Manila, several establishments are part of the DoE’s and Meralco’s Interruptible Load Program (ILP) to help ensure the availability of sufficient electricity.
Big companies, malls, hotels and buildings either have their own gensets that can run or reduce their operations and avoid brownouts. This is so that small businesses and residential users can still continue with their day-to-day activities without any power interruptions.
The ILP is a voluntary and demand-side management program that calls on big-load customers to temporarily de-load from the grid and use their own generating units or reduce their operations when there is insufficient power supply.
Since 2014, the ILP in the Meralco franchise area has been implemented 26 times. Since then, the program has successfully spared as many as 1.8 million households from power interruptions.
Maybe the DoE should also implement or force the NGCP and power service providers in other regions to duplicate Meralco’s ILP.