More Power to MORE Power!

By Herbert Vego

TODAY marks the 5th anniversary of service of MORE Electric and Power Corp. as the power-distribution utility for Iloilo City. Congratulations!

If I remember right, it was on Feb. 29, 2020 (the year being a leap year) when the sheriff of the Iloilo City Regional Trial Court (branch 23) served the writ of possession, dated Feb. 20, authorizing MORE Power to replace Panay Electric Co. (PECO) as the city’s new distribution utility (DU).

Much more than that, this year marks the actual 6th anniversary of the company in accordance with Republic Act 11212. It was on February 14, 2019, Valentine’s Day, when the then President Rodrigo Duterte signed that law which granted MORE Power the franchise to energize Iloilo City in the next 25 years.

Unfortunately, the company could not immediately kick off due to legal conflict with the previous DU that had to be decided by a court of law.

Fortunately, the presumption of credibility stood in favor of MORE Power,  which was already ready to upgrade its predecessor’s obsolete equipment with a capital expenditure of ₱2 billion.

In only five years of operation, MORE Power has leapfrogged from 62,000 to 100,000-plus connected households.

For that big leap, this corner lauds its president and chief operating officer, Roel Z. Castro, who has stirred the company into prominence as distributor of the cheapest electricity in the Philippines today at ₱10.95 per kilowatt-hour (kWh).

Incidentally Castro has been cited by the University of the Philippines-Los Baños (UPLB) as “Outstanding Alumnus for Corporate Governance”.

When we congratulated him, he self-deprecatingly said, “UPLB taught me the values of excellence and honor, of which I am privileged to impart in the city and province of Iloilo. I was honored to represent Iloilo when this award was bestowed on me. I may not be an Ilonggo by birth but I am lucky to be an Ilonggo-at-heart.”

Castro, a Metro Manilan, had actually finished BS Agri-Business at UP in Los Baños, Laguna, but fate intervened to catapult him to management level in the power sector.

After all, he had also earned a post-graduate Master in Management course at the Asian Institute of Management and attended the Advanced Management Program of the University of Asia and the Pacific, as well as the ISSE Business School at the University of Navarra in Spain.

I met Sir Roel for the first time in 2014 (if my memory serves me right) during the launching of the coal-fired power plant of Palm Concepcion Power Corp. (PCPC) in Barangay Nipa, Concepcion, Iloilo, where he served as president.

Before that, he had already honed himself in the energy sector as special assistant to the president of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP); and next as president of Palm Thermal Consolidated Holdings Corp.

‘YES’ TO MORE POWER EXPANSION IN 1^ST DIST.

RETIRED PNB Senior Assistant Vice President Leopoldo “Doods” Moragas of Miag-ao, Iloilo wrote to say that he is in favor of the proposal of a consumer group, Bantay ng Bayan-101 (BNB-101), to expand its coverage to the towns of Guimbal, Igbaras, Miag-ao, Oton, San Joaquin, Tigbauan, and Tubungan in the 1st District of Iloilo.

It would then be competing with the Iloilo Electric Cooperative (ILECO-1) which, according to BNB spokesman Warren Briones, overburden them with more expensive electricity.

Moragas wondered why that is so because, to quote his reaction:

“ILECO is a cooperative with annual revenues of about ₱2.5 billion as of five years ago. Maybe more now. But it has never declared any dividend for its members. Its ‘declared’ net profit margin is close to zero.

“ILECO is a cooperative. We have our board of directors elected by the people. Recently, however, such election has been too politicized that it’s closer to appointment than real election.

“There was a plan to privatize ILECO about 15 years ago by converting it into a stock corporation. For some reasons, maybe by God’s mighty grace, the plan never took off as many of its officers got embroiled in corruption issues.

“Yes, the entry of a new player shall be most welcome.”