Meralco says its operations are not anti-competitive

The Manila Electric Company (Meralco) on Wednesday maintained that it has always operated above board and is compliant with laws.

Meralco Vice President and Head of Corporate Communications Joe Zaldarriaga issued the statement in response to the privilege speech of Laguna Representative Dan Fernandez seeking an investigation on why Meralco’s weighted average cost of capital (WACC) has stayed at 14.97% since 2015 given that its power distribution coverage in Luzon is about 70%.

Zaldarriaga said Meralco does not control power supply in 70% of Luzon since 90% of industrial consumption and 1/3 of commercial consumption in Luzon are accounted for by non-Meralco and competitive retailers like Aboitiz and First Gen, among others.

Likewise, Zaldarriaga said power supply in the Calabarzon area is also supplied by many other electric cooperatives (ECs) and distribution utilities (DUs) such as FLECO, BATELEC I, BATELEC II, Ibaan Electric, First Bay, Quezelco I, and Quezelco III, among others.

“While Meralco is the largest [power distribution] utility in the country, it has never committed and has no record of any-anti competitive behavior or abuse of market power,” Zaldarriaga said.

“On the contrary, we have always managed to supply electricity to our customers in the most transparent and least cost manner, and is the only distribution utility that has complied with an ERC (Energy Regulatory Commission) directive to refund distribution charges by refunding more than P48 billion pesos in 2023,”  he added.

Meralco, Zaldarriaga said, has always capitalized on economies of scale to ensure that it can get the lowest generation cost from its power suppliers.

He added that Meralco has no hand in computing its WACC.

“We have no power to determine the WACC as this is a regulatory function," the Meralco official said. —Llanesca T. Panti/KBK, GMA Integrated News