NEA seeks higher DBM fund release for rural electrification
The full electrification target for sitios as set out by the Duterte administration can only be realized if the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) would increase fund release for the program.
According to National Electrification Administration (NEA) Chief Edgardo Masongsong, the amount earmarked for the country’s Sitio Electrification Program (SEP) next year would be very marginal at just the level of R1.8 billion.
That falls short of the estimated yearly budget of R5.0 billion, so the electrification agency could step up on its commitment of providing electricity access to these far-flung domains.
Masongsong noted that 23,464 sitios in various parts of the Philippines have yet to be energized. As a rule of thumb, the cost of providing energy access to them would be more or less R1.0 million per sitio; or R25 billion for the entire target.
“To enable NEA and its partner electric cooperatives to meet the target of energizing the remaining intended SEP beneficiaries, an estimated budget of R5.0 billion a year is needed,” the NEA administrator has emphasized.
For year 2018, the goal is to bring electricity service 1,800 sitios – and this it was noted, is still considerably a negligible number vis-à-vis SEP’s total coverage.
Given that, the NEA chief said he is wishing that “by 2019 and 2020, we will be getting between R4.8 billion to R5.2 billion per annum so we will be able to energize all these sitios until 2022.”
Beyond concerns on electrification budget, Masongsong also sounded off “the challenges faced by the agency and the 121 electric cooperatives in the implementation of the electrification program” – primarily those that have been wobbled by the recurrent strike of natural calamities.
He has been proposing a comprehensive disaster fund that shall aid electric cooperatives of which facilities been severely battered by extreme weather events – but that has yet to be given notice by concerned higher level government agencies.
Under what he proffers as ‘comprehensive package,’ Masongsong noted that such shall be built upon four goalposts, to include: disaster relief, recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction.
He explained this fund shall be able to assist ECs and their member-consumers from relief operations up to the time that their operations could already be brought back to tip-top condition.