Mayor Beng Climaco yesterday welcomed the decision of the Zamboanga City Electric Cooperative (Zamcelco) Board of Directors to award the co-op’s long overdue Investment Management Contract (IMC) to the lone bidder, the Crown Investment Holdings, with funding for working capital of P2.5 billion.

“Subject to laws and on condition that everything was made above board, I support the awarding of IMC to Crown Investment,” Climaco said, stressing that the IMC has taken so long and now is the time that “we implement it to improve Zamcelco’s management and ensure a very stable electricity in Zamboanga City.”

The mayor said it does not matter to her if there was only one bidder that participated in the bidding process, “after all this has been pending for a very long time, thus it must be done the soonest to meet the deadline for IMC to come in.”

With this development, Climaco was expecting Zamcelco to call the Annual General Membership Assembly (AGMA) the soonest time possible to formally inform the co-op’s member-consumers about the IMC awarded to Crown Investments and all other terms of reference.

Under the IMC, which will run for 25 years and renewable thereafter, the winning bidder shall make upfront payment of Zamcelco’s liability to the National Electrification Administration (NEA), payment of past due obligations to current power suppliers, with ERC-approved power supply agreements, among other terms of reference.

It was learned during the Zamcelco stakeholders meeting last August 10 that the power co-op’s debt liability has reached P2.144 billion, while its system’s loss was pegged at P22.95%, which translates to P3 million for every 1% system’s loss. With a system’s loss cap of 12% plus 22.95% system’s loss, Zamcelco was found out to be losing approximately P33 million a month.

Records also showed that Zamcelco has128,299 member-consumers as of July 2018, and has a total of 17,759 defective meters or meters that needed to be purchased and/or installed immediately.

The IMC that was awarded to Crown Investments has to be submitted yet for approval by the member-consumers during AGMA and eventually to NEA for final approval before its actual implementation.-(Vic Larato)