PECO says asset sale to MORE out of the table

Marcelo Cacho, head of Public Engagement and Government Affairs at PECO, briefs reporters on Thursday, November 13, 2019 on the dispute with rival More Electric and Power Corp. for power distribution in Iloilo City. JonVikto Cabuenas, GMA News

Iloilo City’s sole power distributor, Panay Electric Co. (PECO), on Thursday closed the doors to any possibility of selling its assets to rival More Electric and Power Corp. (MORE).

The two companies have been in conflict over the rights to serve as the power distribution utility of Iloilo, which has recently been affected by blackouts and electric pole fires.

“We are not interested in selling our assets to MORE,” Marcelo Cacho, head of public engagement and government affairs at PECO, told reporters in a press conference in Makati City.

MORE has sets its sights on taking over PECO, which has yet to secure from Congress the renewal of its franchise which lapsed in January this year.

Enrique Razon’s MORE was granted a congressional franchise in February.

Last week, PECO said that the two successive days of power outages in its service area on October 29 and 30 could have been the work of sabotage.

“Now, consumers of Iloilo are asking if this is sabotage to mask the reality that the new power distribution franchise holder is not capable of serving Iloilo because they have no distribution infrastructure in place at all,” Cacho said.

“I am indignant for the people of Iloilo. The coal plant shutdown and the almost-simultaneous pole fires in different areas of Iloilo that they want to attribute to us make me wonder if there’s something happening behind the scenes,” he said.

MORE has since urged PECO to “factually and objectively” prove its claims of sabotage.

“Given the state of their system, plus a master electrician running the operations, there is no need for sabotage for the extended blackout to happen,” said MORE president Roel Castro.

Cacho said the company is now waiting for the congressional renewal of its franchise which it filed in 2017.

“We can actually still file a new franchise at any given time, but we'll wait first to see more movement in the courts,” he said.

PECO also has a pending petition with the Supreme Court, pleading to suspend the expropriation proceedings and prevent a takeover of its assets.

“Whatever the SC decides—with this expropriation—will become a landmark case and will create a precedent,” Cacho noted.

“We urge that the ERC not be manipulated by the sabotage and we urge MORE to do the right thing also,” he said. —VDS, GMA News