P437 billion NAPOCOR debt

There is an urgent matter that needs Senate Blue Ribbon committee attention and this is the proposed pass on to the electricity consumers the P437 billion NAPOCOR debt. Not only is the proposal immoral, but could actually be a design to whitewash irregularities in past bidding or mishandling of funds.

Let us go down to the facts that have been publicly circularized.

Assuming $2 billion or P100 billion or about one-fourth of the debt is from the mothballed Bataan nuclear power plant, where did the rest of the P350 billion debt come from?

Let us backtrack a little. The Marcos dictatorship did a lot of geothermal power plants - Macban, Tiwi, Palimpinon, Tongonan. The Ramos administration followed suit with several gas turbine plants to solve the power crisis of the nineties. The Estrada administration also put up several coal-fired power plants.

The Senate must investigate the source of the money that financed the building of these power plants. If debts were incurred a simple comparision of megawatt generated versus total amount borrowed could already reveal if the debt was overblown by corruption. And officials responsible for the project should be prosecuted without let up.

The other important consideration is the disposition of the proceeds of sale of some of the power plants which the PSALM, the government arm that managed the privatization of the power plants, has received. Were the proceeds used to reduce the debt? If not, then the officials of PSALM could be guilty of wilfull mismanagement if not outright technical malversation of public funds.