368 Benguet sitios energized:Beneco urges P-Noy: Condone P100M loan

By Dexter See 

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet  – The Benguet Electric Cooperative here has energized around 368 additional non-viable sitios in Benguet under the government’s Sitio Energization Program (SEP).

This, as Beneco appealed to President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III to grant their request for condonation of payment for P100 million the power firm loaned from the National Electrification Agency to bring elelctricity to areas in Benguet which still did not have power.  

Engineer Melchor Licoben, Beneco engineering department manager, said under SEP, the power firm has provided power to about 85 percent of its target beneficiaries in the 13 towns of Benguet and remaining 15 percent of beneficiaries will have electricity in the next two years.

Licoben said Beneco energized 189 sitios benefitting 1,864 electric consumers from the various municipalities of Benguet.

“We have to fastrack the completion of our energization projects because the people living in the remote villages had been longing for power in order to help them improve their living condition and contribute in the increase of economic activities that will also contribute in decongesting urgan centers provincewide,” Licoben said.

Under the SEP funded by the national government through the National Electrification Administration, Licoben also reported Beneco energized 590 more household consumers from 49 sitios in four Benguet municipalities.

The coop has also energized 130 sitios benefitting 2,720 under a P100 Million loan from the National Electrification Administration in 2009.

For this year, Licoben bared that in partnership with NEA, electrification projects are set for implementation in 231 more sitios while 185 more were already proposed for further funding from the national government’s Sitio Electrification Program in order to bring to the grassroots level the benefits of having quality power that will be a key economic driver, especially in the far flung communities of the country.

Meantime, Beneco board of directors president Peter Busaing, in the same forum, disclosed that Beneco is pushing for a condonation of the balance of its P100 million loan from NEA, wherein a House Bill was already filed in Congress by Baguio congressmen Nicasio Aliping Jr. and Ronald Cosalan of Benguet for such purpose.

Busaing said since the 2009 P100 million loan (from NEA) was used for SEP and given that the national government, since 2011 has been providing funding subsidy also for SEP, Beneco is asking Congress for condonation, so that succeeding payments for the loan can be usesd for other electrification programs and projects in Benguet.

Beneco has paid around P22.8 million of the loan principal and P24.4 million for interests, of the P100 million loan from NEA that was set to energize more non-viable sitios in the province.