Imee Marcos questions MIF funding for NGCP, calls for regulatory oversight

Senator Imee Marcos on Tuesday questioned the proposal by her cousin, House Speaker Martin Romualdez, to use part of the Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) to address power transmission issues through investment in the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP).

Marcos argued that regulatory measures by the Energy Regulatory Commission should be prioritized over public funding and emphasized that NGCP's performance rather than its financial resources is the critical issue.

She noted that despite distributing PHP239 billion out of PHP307 billion in comprehensive income over 14 years, NGCP has ongoing issues such as automatic load-dropping incidents and delays in grid projects lasting up to seven years.

The senator highlighted recent power outages in Panay Island and parts of Negros Oriental, urging the exclusion of unfinished NGCP projects from rate computations to incentivize timely completion of infrastructure.

Sen. Grace Poe, chairperson of the Senate committee on public services, has since called for a review of NGCP's franchise following Marcos' questioning of the MIF investment proposal.