FIVE energy-generating companies will remit shares from their total electricity sales directly to the Cebu Provincial Government.
For this purpose, Provincial Treasurer Roy Salubre said the Capitol has already opened 15 bank accounts.
“More than 20 percent of the accounts are now open. The accounts are ready and the power plants may start remitting shares,” Salubre said in a Sugbo News report.
The Provincial Treasurer’s Office, though, has yet to determine how much it will receive from the power-generating firms.
The Capitol will also open trust fund accounts for its shares from years before 2017, which will be remitted by the Department of Energy (DOE).
MOA
On Nov. 28, 2019, Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with power firm executives to allow the Province to directly take its shares of total electricity sales from the First Toledo Solar Energy Corp., Korea Electric Power Corp., Bantayan Island Power Corp. and Global Business Power Corp.
The move came a month after Therma Visayas Inc. (TVI) signed a MOA with Garcia in October 2019, allowing the Province to take its shares of TVI’s total electricity sales.
On Aug. 7, 2018, the DOE issued Circular 2018-08-0021, which amends the implementing rules and regulations of Rule 29 (a) of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001. The circular follows Section 5 (i) of Republic Act 7638 (Department of Energy Act of 1992).
Benefits
The law mandates the DOE to devise ways and means of giving direct benefits to the province, city or municipality, especially the community and people affected and equitable and preferential to the region that hosts the energy resource/energy-generating facility.
Section 6 of the circular states that the financial benefit shall be allocated in the following manner: 25 percent of one centavo per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for development and livelihood fund (DLF); and 25 percent of P0.0025/kWh for reforestation, watershed management, health and for environment enhancement fund (RWMHEEF).
The DLF and RWMHEEF shall be allocated in the following manner: community and people affected (five percent), host barangays (20 percent), host municipalities or cities (35 percent), host provinces (30 percent), host indigenous cultural communities/indigenous peoples (five percent) and host region (five percent). (ANV / RTF)