Electricity transmission is a critical element of national development and social progress, it should not be entrusted to private groups like the Chinese from mainland China, Wennie Sancho, Power Watch Negros Advocates Inc. secretary general, said Friday, January 12.
Sancho said the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) is 60 percent owned by Filipinos and 40 percent by Chinese investors.
“The problem is not just the transmission lines nationwide being run by a private sector – but that a foreign government of China is practically the co-manager of NGCP,” Sancho said in a press statement.
It virtually transfers the control of the switchboard from the Philippine government to the foreign government via a foreign company – the State Grid Corporation of China, which is owned by the People’s Republic of China, he said.
The extent of Chinese interest on investing in strategic and backbone infrastructure puts our national security in peril because the same electricity transmission grid has fiber optics that is being used as a communications back bone, Sancho said.
“The NGCP is the ‘heart’ of the whole power system. It is the hub of the energy sector. More than anything else, it is our moral duty to protect our national security. The Chinese might rename NGCP as the National Grid for the Chinese People,” he added.
Privatizing transmission will put an end to the government’s role in playing a crucial development and balancing role in the energy sector, he said.
“Market manipulation and control over transmission can be abused to unduly and unreasonably raise prices at the expense of the consumers. The TransCo privatization is not only wrong in principle. The sale of the country’s electrical industry’s backbones has serious repercussions and ominous development and security ramifications,” he added.
“Worse, with TransCo privatization, it is not just transferring the control of this strategic utility from government to private. Placing the 21,319 circuit kilometers transmission lines nationwide with a broad band capacity under a private operator like NGCP, which might be subject to the power of impelling dominance of China’s State Grid Corporation as co-manager of NGCP, is a matter of national security concern, Sancho said.*