BY JOCELYN MONTEMAYOR

PRESIDENT Arroyo yesterday said the National Power Corp. has cut its selling price to Meralco by 59 centavos, bringing its rate down to P3.52 per kilowatt hour.

Arroyo, speaking before the general assembly of the Federation of Philippine Industries at the Hotel Intercon in Makati City, said the reduced rate was a result of an earlier directive to Napocor to charge Meralco the same low rate of P4.11 per kwh that it gives to Luzon-based electric cooperatives.

She issued the directive during the Energy Summit from January to February after learning that Meralco paid a generation fee of P6 to P11 per kwh whenever it bought from Napocor and the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) during peak hours.

In the same summit, she suggested that government agencies and private groups submit a petition to the Energy Regulatory stopping Meralco from buying electricity from WESM at peak hours.

"Last night, at a meeting after midnight — one of the few meetings we have after midnight — we are happy that when we were asking Napocor to account for it, they did even better. The generation cost of high-load factor PEZA (Philippine Economic Zone Authority) ecozone locators has been reduced to an average Napocor billing rate to Meralco not of P4.11 but of P3.52 per kilowatt hour," she said.

Meralco in its website said its generation charge, which "is the payment for the electricity generated by suppliers such as the National Power Corp. and Independent Power Producers as well as purchases from WESM" from January to April, were as follows: P4.4275 per kwh hour, P4.1946 per kwh, P4.3885 per kwh, and P4.9073 per kwh.

The generation fees charged by Napocor were P3.9728 per kwh in January, P4.9043 per kwh in February, P4.5231 per kwh in March and P4.0173 per kwh in April.