Energy Columns in BusinessWorld

Philippines ratings upgrade, energy policies to sustain growth May 24, 2023 | 4:18 pm My Cup Of Liberty By Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. https://www.bworldonline.com/opinion/2023/05/24/524678/philippines-ratings-upgrade-energy-policies-to-sustain-growth/ .... ENERGY ISSUES The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) has recently been on the hot seat in the eyes of the public, government regulators, and legislature. See these recent reports in  BusinessWorld : “NGCP warns RE intermittency could pose grid integration issues” (May 14), “Gov’t may retake control of NGCP” (May 14), “NGCP confident of hurdling proposed audit of operations” (May 18), “DoE expects NGCP audit to start this year” (May 21), “Senate probe sought on delays in NGCP projects” (May 21). The trigger was the series of yellow and red alerts and rotating blackouts in the Luzon-Visayas grids, the latest being on May 8. The NGCP’s PR guys tried to spin the event as due to failing power plants when the reality was its t...

The NGCP wall: Transmission problem blamed as generation problem May 10, 2023 | 5:06 pm My Cup Of Liberty By Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. https://www.bworldonline.com/opinion/2023/05/10/522028/the-ngcp-wall-transmission-problem-blamed-as-generation-problem/ Consider these three instances of good news and bad news in the Philippine economy. Last Monday morning, May 8, the good news came when employment data for March 2023 was released by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA): the labor force participation rate remained high at 66% vs. 65.4% in March 2022, 63.3% in 2021 full year; unemployment and underemployment rates remained low at 4.7% and 11.2% respectively, vs. 5.8% and 15.8% in March 2022, and 7.8% and 15.9% in 2021. See this report in  BusinessWorld , “Underemployment rate at 18-year low” (May 9). These numbers are good news for investors, they will come, stay and possibly expand here because people have jobs, have money to buy. Then, on the afternoon of that day, the bad new...