PEB Singapore, the PPP Center, transport liberalization

* BusinessWorld Sept. 12, 2022.
-----------------

Four important economic and business developments occurred last week that I want to comment on.

1. Philippine Economic Briefing, Singapore

Last Wednesday, Sept. 7, President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. and his economic and infrastructure teams held the Philippine Economic Briefing (PEB) in Singapore, which was attended by many investors.

In Panel 1, the speakers were Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno, Socio-Economic Secretary Arsenio Balisacan, Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman, Central Bank Governor Felipe Medalla, and SM Investment Corp. (SMIC) Vice-Chair Teresita Sy-Coson. The four officials spoke clearly about the macroeconomic and fiscal stability of the country. And it was a brilliant idea to have another speaker from Philippine business. Singapore businessmen know the Sy and SM conglomerate, and Ms. Coson spoke positively about the economic team and economic outlook of the Philippines. When the panel ended, there was loud applause in the conference room.

Panel 2 had Trade Secretary Alfredo Pascual, Public Works Secretary Manuel Bonoan, Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista, Tourism Secretary Maria Esperanza Christina Garcia Frasco, and Information and Communications Technology Secretary Ivan John Uy. I would say it was another slam dunk — with “come and invest in the Philippines” messaging that was clearly and convincingly delivered. And since Singapore is the Regional Headquarters of many multinationals from the west, the message must have been echoed well.

A report in BusinessWorld about the Singapore event noted that, “Electric tricycle, floating solar projects top Singapore investment deals from Marcos visit” (Sept. 8).

Investment pledges after the PEB Singapore came to $6.5 billion. Of this, $5 billion would be for the manufacturing of electric tricycles and $1.2 billion for floating solar. This does not seem right. More e-tricycles mean more power demand and our power generation is low — only 108 terawatt-hours (TWH) in 2021, less than half of Vietnam’s 245 TWH. Solar or wind are not baseload power sources, their output and storage are intermittent and very unstable.

The Philippines should aim for an increase of at least 7 TWH/year in power generation from 2023-2025 versus an increase of only 3.5 TWH/year in 2016-2021, then at least 10 TWH/year more from 2026-2028, to avoid the frequent yellow-red alerts that we experienced until this year. Vietnam has increased its power generation over the last 10 years by 14-15 TWH/year. Big commercial and industrial projects will not come in if they see that they will face occasional blackouts and that they must buy and regularly run huge expensive gensets.

Big industrial countries like Germany, the UK, France and Japan have entered a deindustrialization and low growth phase as they shut down many of their fossil fuel and nuclear plants and rely more on intermittent wind-solar. In contrast, South East Asian countries keep humming with their conventional energy sources and experience fast growth (see Table 1).

....

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Declining inflation and Germany’s energiewende

Image
Declining inflation and Germany’s energiewende June 8, 2023 | 12:02 am My Cup Of Liberty By Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. https://www.bworldonline.com/opinion/2023/06/08/527389/declining-inflation-and-germanys-energiewende/ ... ERRATUM I would like to apologize to the readers for the error in transposition in headings in Table 1 of my column last week, “NGCP, low power generation, and the Maharlika Fund” (June 1). The table’s column on Population should have been for Power generation and vice versa. Sorry for that mistake and the confusion it created. Nonetheless, the column and computed kWh/person remains valid and correct. Also, the numbers on average growth in power generation and GDP remain valid and correct. Meanwhile, here are some points about the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) that I did not include in my column last week. One, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) in previous administrations had issued a lot of show cause orders with penalties to private distributio
Read more

Another round of high FiT due to expensive wind-solar power

Image
* My article in  BusinessWorld  last January 24, 2017. Cheaper electricity and stable energy supply are among the important components to have fast and sustainable economic growth. On Jan. 17, the Philippine Electricity Market Corp. (PEMC) sent a press release saying that “effective settlement spot prices (ESSPs) in the wholesale electricity spot market (WESM) plunged to P2.28/kWH for the December 2016 billing period which is the lowest since January 2011. ESSPs refer to the average prices paid by wholesale customers for energy purchased from the spot market.” That is good news as various players using fossil fuel sources like coal, natural gas, and oil, are fiercely competing with each other in generating electricity. WESM was created by EPIRA of 2001. On the same day, the Department of Energy (DoE) posted a “Request for comments on the draft Department Circular entitled ‘Declaring the launch of WESM in Mindanao’ (on Jan. 26, 2016) and providing for transition arrangements.” Another g
Read more

Energy realism: Raising consumption and economic growth

Image
Energy realism: Raising consumption and economic growth June 29, 2023 | 12:02 am My Cup Of Liberty By Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. https://www.bworldonline.com/opinion/2023/06/29/531213/energy-realism-raising-consumption-and-economic-growth/ (Part 1) This column will produce a series of articles on energy realism, not alarmism, to support sustained economic growth for developing countries, especially the Philippines. New global data are now available from the Energy Institute (EI), which launched the Statistical Review of World Energy 2023 on June 26. The report has been published by British Petroleum since the 1960s until 2022. We start with consumption of primary energy — commercially traded fuels, fossil and nuclear, plus modern renewables for electricity generation. I compare GDP per capita at purchasing power parity values at constant prices, and primary energy consumption in gigajoule (GJ) per capita. One GJ is equivalent to 277.8 kWh in electricity, or 0.16 barrel of oil. I grouped
Read more