Rollout of ADB-funded e-trikes extended until May next year

The Department of Energy (DOE) has secured approval to extend the loan and roll out of the rest of the 3,000 electric tricycles (e-trike) under the government’s joint project with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) until May 2019.

The agency was supposed to distribute the e-trikes only until this month, but the deadline for the roll out of units had been extended to next year, DOE assistant secretary Leonido Pulido said.

“The Department of Finance (DOF) already sent a letter (that the loan got extended),” he said.

This allows the DOE—as the implementing agency—to continue deploying e-trike units to local government units (LGUs), Pulido said.

“There’s a period when you can draw from the funds of ADB, and that was supposed to be until June 30, 2018. If it’s not extended, then we have a problem because we won’t be able to pay the supplier because that’s where the fund comes from, it’s from the loan from ADB. So we had to ask for an extension because we needed more time to finish the documentation for the commitments to the LGU,” the DOE official said.

The DOF and ADB were the signatories to the 2013 loan agreement amounting to $504 million, or roughly P21.67 billion, covering the delivery of 100,000 e-trike units to local government units (LGUs) by yearend.

The initial tranche involved 3,000 e-trikes. However, there were no takers for the units due to steep price per unit and the lack of charging stations.

But in December 2016, DOE Secretary Alfonso Cusi decided to reduce the loan and discontinue the production of the rest of the 10,000 e-trikes to save the government from incurring more expenses and from disrupting the electric vehicle industry’s growth from non-economical projects.

The existing e-trikes will instead be donated to LGUs to promote the transition to cleaner public utility vehicles (PUVs).

Out of the 3,000 e-trikes ready for deployment, around 1,200 are committed for distribution to several LGUs.