State-run Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corporation (PSALM) has reduced its outstanding debt by P8.44 billion last year to P346.76 billion from the prior year’s P335.25 billion on higher revenues.
According to PSALM President and CEO Dennis Edward A. Dela Serna, the firm’s improved financial outcome had been mainly “buoyed by efforts to sell power supply at reasonable returns and asset disposal using streamlined procedures.”
Primarily on the continued divestment of real estate assets previously owned by its precursor-company National Power Corporation (NPC), the company generated upfront income of P1.84 billion.
Dela Serna expounded that revenue drivers had been “complemented by the efficient management of foreign exchange risks by contracting new loans in Philippine peso to refinance maturing foreign-denominated loans and the robust collection of outstanding receivables that have remained unpaid to PSALM for the longest time as well as the measures implemented to cut on operational costs.”
In terms of power sales, the government-owned company reported revenues shoring up of P18.94 billion within January-November stretch last year; and that redounds to collection efficiency of 94.62-percent.
On the sphere of universal charge (UC) collections, PSALM said it equally transcended drawbacks, having logged full-year 99.98 percent collection efficiency for aggregate remittances of P19.06 billion.
Additionally, interest earnings from deposits and placements of UC funds reached P342 million; while UC fund disbursements hovered at P18.921 billion.
With record-high UC collections, PSALM conveyed that it was able to dispense its collected universal charge-missionary electrification (UCME) to beneficiary-entities NPC as well as to the renewable energy (RE) developers.
“PSALM disbursed 100 percent UCME to NPC amounting to P14.79 billion and to RE developers amounting to P0.19 billion with a total amount of P14.98 billion,” the company stressed.
On PSALM’s new leadership under the Marcos administration, the priorities cast had been the privatization of the 165-MW Casecnan hydropower facility this year; to be followed by the targeted sale of the 796.46-MW Caliraya-Botocan-Kalayaan (CBK) power facility in 2024.
Others in the company’s major to-do list will be its bid for tariff adjustments on the true-up costs of its power plants; and managing the remaining liabilities – including allocation to the Murang Kuryente Act which ditched the UC-stranded debts in the electric bills; and pursuing legal strategies on pending litigation cases.