House Speaker Faustino “Bojie” Dy III and House Majority Leader Sandro Marcos (Ilocos Norte, 1st District) have filed a measure aimed at protecting consumers from paying for electricity theft, utility negligence, and operational inefficiencies on their monthly power bills.
Under House Bill 10430, or the proposed Systems Loss Charge Abolition Act, distribution utilities would no longer be permitted to shift controllable operational failures onto paying customers, while still allowing them to recover legitimate costs essential for efficient power delivery.
“President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr. has placed high electricity costs at the center of the national agenda, and Speaker Bojie Dy and I are drawing a fair line: consumers should pay for efficient service, not for theft, negligence, or operational failures they did not cause. Hindi dapat gawing insurance policy ang buwanang bill ng ordinaryong pamilya para sa mga pagkukulang na kayang pigilan ng utility,” Marcos stressed.
If enacted, HB 10430 would prohibit utilities from passing off disallowed system losses through wheeling fees, metering charges, supply charges, universal charges, subsidies, or any other line item on a consumer’s bill.
“This is not a blanket denial of legitimate costs, and that distinction matters to President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr. and Speaker Bojie Dy. Utilities that operate efficiently may recover prudent expenses, but costs born of controllable losses must remain where responsibility belongs,” Marcos explained.
To ensure fairness, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) will be tasked with determining the specific, minimal portion of electricity used in the efficient operation of a distribution network that can be legally recovered through distribution wheeling charges.
However, losses caused by power theft, illegal connections, stolen or damaged equipment, billing errors, defective meters, poor maintenance, and other controllable inefficiencies will be strictly barred from customer billings.
While distribution utilities will retain the right to recover reasonable expenses needed to maintain reliable power service and financial stability, the ERC will set minimum efficiency benchmarks, including standards for service outage frequency and collection performance.