‘“… No concrete plans yet. A lot of it are press releases and just talk, and negotiations.”’
THE recent Senate plenary deliberations on the Department of Energy’s proposed budget for 2025 became an occasion for two senators — Sherwin Gatchalian and Imee Marcos — to recognize the need for government intervention to hurry up the completion of interconnectivity in the nation’s electric grid, a project that the privately owned National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) is having a hard time to complete.
Sadly, the Maharlika Investment Corp. (MIC) has yet to provide concrete plans for its supposed investments in the country’s energy sector, Senator Gatchalian said.
About the years-long delays in the NGCP projects, an exasperated Senator Marcos asked, “Is there any possibility for a more creative, out-of-the-box solution such as building the interconnection project ourselves in government though a government consortium led by the Maharlika Investment as they’ve announced time and again in the media together with TransCo (National Transmission Corporation), and once and for all finish this like other responsible government where critical infrastructures such as this are built and owned and operated by the government because they are so strategic and critical?”
Senator Gatchalian supported the proposal, pointing out that the government “should take charge” of the interconnectivity projects if the private entity cannot build them due to lack of capital, because they are of national and public interest.
“That is precisely also one of the reasons why Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) was also created, to go into critical infrastructure and to use public funds to build those infrastructures,” Gatchalian said.
It has been 16 months since the creation of the Maharlika Investment Corp. and the funding by the government of some P75 billion for the fund to encourage more foreign investments. The MIC was envisioned by Republic Act 11954 to invest in various sectors of the economy, such as infrastructure (physical, digital and social), energy (oil, gas and power), agroforestry, industrial urbanization, minerals processing, tourism, transportation, aerospace and aviation. Included among the potential investments of the country’s first sovereign wealth fund are the 190 proposed Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects of the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA).
When the MIC was hastily formed, the Department of Finance said the Fund is designed to catalyze economic development and accelerate the country’s growth by optimizing the use of government financial assets and promoting their intergenerational management.
While other wealth funds are financed by surplus incomes from assets and other natural resources of countries that own them, ours was hastily established with the seed capital coming from two government banks (Land Bank of the Philippines and Development Bank of the Philippines), and dividends or earnings from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
The more reason therefore for the MIC to hasten its planning on what to do and implement these to show some results, even if only a little, to reassure the public and local and foreign investors.
On the MIC’s plans concerning the energy sector, Gatchalian noted: “No concrete plans yet. A lot of it are press releases and just talk, and negotiations.” He added that while the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) has issued several show-cause orders to NGCP to justify why their projects are delayed, the firm is resisting the idea that the government should undertake the grid’s expansion.
The two chambers of Congress are also at fault for not wielding their oversight powers over the MIC and the NGCP.
