Filipino consumers will have to bear another financial toll by shouldering in their electricity bills the mammoth P470.865 billion stranded debts of state-run National Power Corporation via a levelized universal charge (UC) of P0.3049 per kilowatt hour (kWh) proposed for recovery from 2009 until year 2025.

In a filing made by the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corporation (PSALM), it proposed two modes of recovery for the UC for stranded debts: either to do it for 17 years at P0.3049 per kWh; or to soften the impact by spreading the pass-on period to 21 years or until 2029 for a charge of P0.2252 per kWh. The charges will be uniform for consumers in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.

PSALM is NPC’s successor-company that has been mandated under the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) to administer the UC collections for the power firm’s stranded debts and stranded contract costs. These are treated as separate items in the consumers’ billings.

The stranded debt (SD), along with the UC for stranded contract costs (SCC) in the universal charge items, would be among those yet to be added in the rate components to be billed to consumers.

The company qualified though that the P470.865 billion resulting figures would be “net of the positive cash flow that are expected to occur during the period 2025 to 2029 due to excess privatization
proceeds over debt service.”

Meanwhile, PSALM filed a separate application for stranded contract cost (SCC) recovery amounting to P22.256 billion.

The company proposed three modes of SCC cost recovery: if done for one year, the corresponding universal charge in the consumers electricity bills would be P0.5024 per kWh; at three-year recovery, the charge will be P0.1604 per kWh; and for five-year recovery, it will be for P0.0920 per kWh charge.