Our electricity bill has been doubled in three years time. The average costs has gone up from USD 0.11 to USD 0.24/KwH !! That is outrageous! How can anybody sustain a business or living with such ridiculous increases. And is it justified? Solar is becoming cheaper and certainly can beat those idiotic NORECO rates. Just wonder why nobody is saying and doing anything about it. The typical Filipino way. Dont complain. Just accept it. Dont stick out your neck. Who is there to take actions and start campaigning against NORECO. We turned off all aircons, we still pay double compared to 3 years ago, with the same consumption. Or shld we all move to Valencia? Oude Vos
But Valencia rates are peanuts compared to Dumaguete/NORECO. Even if it is quadruppled. The point is, nobody seems to care or complain about it. Whether that helps or not. I think people should express and find out why rates are being doubled. NORECO is not telling us. Bad service.
Its all across the Philippines rates are rising. Same issue when I lived in Cagayan de Oro before I moved to Dumaguete, and same issue many other places. The issue isn't so much Noreco but a government that is profitting off of it and wants to keep allowing it even though increases are supposed to be approved and reason stating why which is supposed to be checked.
It's true Valencia households get P800 per month rebate, but the peso per KWH is pretty close to the same. Larry
I believe that this is going on throughout the Third World, here just the same -- the government has previously subsidized both electricity and gasoline, made them much cheaper than what they really cost, as a program to help the majority poor. They have by now discovered that this is a mistaken policy, it creates unsustainable budget problems and encourages waste of energy. Therefore they are now steadily withdrawing the subsidies, getting energy prices closer to reality. It should steadily forced the populace to use less, which will pollute less, and also push us all towards solar and other renewable forms. Hurts our pocketbooks but it's a good thing in the long-run -- if the policies are handled correctly -- especially as global oil production rates may soon begin to decline, carbon pollution is an increasing problem, in the Middle Eastern oil-exporting countries become ever more troublesome to be dependent upon...
Correct but of course only one aspect of the whole range of developments here and in other countries, what I would like to see is that the rich start to shoulder more responsibility towards the poor but I am sure they have other things to worry about...
Now while I think that the wages need to become fair as far as the rich paying a higher percent I used to feel that way but these days really disagree. I really got to thinking one day about the differences between the rich and poor mindsets which is quite simple to understand. You look at the rich or least self made people and they did it through hard work, taking risks, challenging the system, and constant pushing. The poor however are quite content to just sit around and complain quietly working for grains of rice while they never try and save even if they suffer shortterm, them don't try and take risks, they do the minimum amount of work needed to collect their pay, and they don't think how to better themselves other then hope someone else does. For this I really don't think its fair that the rich should pay higher percents then the poor. Its very much rewarding failure and punishing success. The only sticky part is those who have their wealth from their parents and families. But you can't exactly charge someone more just because their parents or grandparents were rich while being fair to the self made men and women. If one person worked hard his whole life trying to get ahead, he/she suffered when times were bad so one day could get ahead, he/she sacrificed and took risks to get ahead one day.... why should we make them have to pay for everyone who didn't even try?
NORECO 2 Dumaguete City Bill July 2008..... P2495......... 470 KW = 5,30/KW Bill January 2012..... P5078......... 568 KW = 8,94/KW
Philippine electric rates are high. I just looked it up...in my hometown in the US, the rates are $.037 or about P1.6 per kwH, that's about 1/5 the rate in Dumaguete. And the electric on my house in Thailand seems to run about half what my electric runs in the Phils. I guess the Lopez's made a good decision buying those power plants from the government...