Electricity connections in rural areas top 14.8 M (Sabong News)

A total of 582,083 new customers have been connected to electricity supply last year, bringing total service connections to 14,835,390 households as of 2021, according to the National Electrification Administration (NEA). By end-December last year, the electrification agency said the total service connections of electric cooperatives already accounted for 91 percent of the nationwide energization target. Based on the figure, NEA emphasized that it was able to surpass its performance in 2021 by additional 182,083 connections, or about 46 percent higher vis-à-vis the original target of 400,000 connections. NEA also emphasized that it was able to log that accomplishment “despite the difficulties brought by the current health crisis” in which several lockdowns and movement restrictions had hampered project implementations in various parts of the country. Of total EC electricity service connections, Luzon got the lion’s share with 6.929 million customers or 47 percent; Visayas with 3.941 million or 26 percent; and Mindanao with 3.965 million or 27 percent share. Given the ramped up connections, NEA pointed out that the number of unserved consumers in the rural areas decreased to 1,331,877 based on the 2015 census. With the traction already gained on the government’s electrification program, NEA Administrator Emmanuel P. Juaneza noted that the agency and the ECs “will not stop from fulfilling (their) social contract of extending the benefits of electricity to more Filipinos in the rural areas even during this critical time.” He further stated that within this year, the electrification agency is eyeing its milestone 15th million customer-connection although it was not specified if this is still achievable within the remaining months of the current administration. The exiting Duterte administration already missed its original goal of fulfilling 100 percent household electrification on or before the end of his term this June 2022, but NEA already already noted as early as last year that they are being confronted with physical mobility constraints as well as budgeting hurdles. With the State’s main focus of aligning funds for the Covid-19 response, the budget for electrification has been suffering from cutbacks since the strike of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. By the agency’s estimate, it will need P18 billion to completely carry through the energization of all households in the rural areas up to June this year, but it was only granted a measly P1.8 billion budget.