In the midst of lingering slump in the demand of industrial customers, utility giant Manila Electric Company (Meralco) is still anticipating to end the year with a flat sales growth.

“Despite some improvements, sales to industrial customers were still down by 4.0% in the last quarter, so we’re still eyeing a flat growth for the full year,” Meralco president Jose P. De Jesus said.

While there have been marked increase in residential demand, it was noted that the impact of outages during typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng, will weigh down on the utility firm’s overall sales performance for the fourth quarter.
The company emphasized that “sustained remittances, low inflation and electricity prices and the number of holidays in August and September this year were the main reasons for the 3.5-percent increase in residential sales” since the last quarter.

As of end-September, the company reported sales reaching 20,392 gigawatt hours (gWhs), posting a very modest 1.1 percent climb from last year for the same period.

Overall, it is the commercial sector seen sustaining the sales performance of the utility firm, offsetting whatever decline it has been experiencing with the big-ticket industrial users.

“Trade, transport, storage and communication led the sales of the commercial sector, increasing by 2.9%,” the utility firm said.

The global economic slump has impacted adversely on export-driven industries that Meralco’s electricity sales to the segment suffered a significant 20-percent dip in January. Yet, businesses have started seeing performance rebound starting second half of the year.

The other area that Meralco has been strategizing on is with its supply procurement – to ensure that its customers will be offered electricity service at competitive rates, while also honoring contractual obligations with power providers such as state-run National Power Corporation and the independent power producers.

The company noted its average level of procurement from NPC in the past nine months was at 40-percent, while the supply it got from the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) inched up a bit to 13-percent, with higher volumes secured when prices are lower at the spot market.

In line with the on-going privatization of NPC assets, Meralco has also been assigned transition supply contracts (TSCs) at the course of transferring the facilities to their private buyers.