AN ESTIMATED P126 million in revenues were lost by the Benguet Electric Cooperative (Beneco) during the three-month Luzon-wide enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), which started in March and lifted in June due to the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).
Engineer Melchior Licoben, Beneco officer-in-charge, explained the loss was based on the monthly projection by the electric cooperative before the declaration of the ECQ.
“Our loss is based on the monthly forecasted sales and revenues of the cooperative. We are down by 19 percent in sales and revenues equivalent to P30 million while our forgone revenue or lost revenue for the said months amounts to P126 million,” Licoben said.
The losses incurred include Beneco’s generation-transmission and distribution side, to which the cooperative wishes that businesses would soon go back to normal.
“We can never recover this lost or foregone income of the cooperative but learning from the health pandemic, I think what we should focus on is on how we should be more prudent in our expenses and to be more conservative in our projections,” the OIC general manager stated.
During the implementation of the three-month-long ECQ, the City Government asked lessors of business establishments, including Beneco, Baguio Water District (BWD) and City Treasurer’s Office, to waive and suspend collecting payments as a reprieve to the residents affected by the Luzon-wide ECQ.
“We have experienced this similar loss during the July 16, 1990 earthquake, where it took us four years before we came back to normalcy in terms of the cooperative's sales and revenues. We also experienced this in 2004 during the meningococcemia scare where our sales and revenues were down for two months,” Licoben added.