The manufacturers want direct access by large users to unregulated electricity prices from generation owners (most notably, but not only, Napocor) now.
(Ooops, I forgot the term used here in the Philippines is “open access” not “direct access” which is a California term.)
EPIRA allows this but only after something like 75% of Napocor is privatized.
This is an important issue for the economy.
Here’s the tricky part that ERC will be faced with, it seems to me: how to assure that Napocor in not subsidizing the manufacturing sector either by running losses that might be attributable to concessionary rates to that sector or by pushing more than a fair share of costs (i.e. by including costs not absorbed by the manufacturing sector) onto other consumers through Napocor’s regulated TOU rates embedded in the Transition Supply Contracts with all the cooperatives and other distribution utilities.
Or maybe that’s simply a subsidy the nation chooses to make. Or maybe the economists have a clear way to handle this. For sure, there will be a debate – or should be.