Philippine Business Magazine: Volume 9 No. 1 - Cover
Electric Dreams
One thousand remote communities will have electricity before the year is over. Imagine the business potentials this will create
By Maricar T. Manuzon

One of our lingering problems is that of rural electrification. Of the 42,000 barangays nationwide, over 4,000 still do not have electric power. Access to electricity will dramatically change the lives of people within those 4,000 barangays enabling them to do things we take for granted like eating, reading, doing housework comfortably at night. It will enable them to irrigate, make ice, refrigerate agricultural and marine products, and process food. Indeed, it will enable them to enter the 21st century.” These were the words of President Arroyo when she challenged the business community to uplift the lives of the rural folks by going into projects that will bring power into their communities.

But even before the President gave this challenge early this year, Mirant Philippines Corporation already committed to spend P1 billion to finance its project dubbed “Barangay Electrification Assistance for the Countryside” (Project BEACON). The project commits to the electrification of 1,000 unenergized barangays in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao by end-2002. BEACON, which is being implemented by Mirant’s social development arm, Mirant Philippines Foundation, is said to be the first and the largest corporate social responsibility program of its kind from a private corporation.

Mirant Philippines Foundation is a non-profit organization established to contribute to the over-all national development efforts of the government. These development initiatives focus on the areas of health, education, and rural electrification. With BEACON, its largest project to date, it aims to bring the benefits of electricity to the far-flung rural communities and isolated islands in the country to spur economic activities and improve the quality of life of people living in its beneficiary-areas.

In an interview with Philippine Business, Edgardo Bautista, president of Mirant Philippines, stressed that BEACON is not just a question of lighting a barangay. “It is more than that because of its magnitude. We’re talking of one billion peso private sector initiative in one of the government’s priority concerns which is improving the rural areas. We really intended Project BEACON to be a high impact program precisely because we want it to be the catalyst of private sector participation in community development, although not necessarily in the aspect of rural electrification.”

Bautista elaborated on the two thrusts of the project. “One is this partnership with government on government infrastructure programs, and second — and more important — is to get the private sector to really go on a certain degree in helping government develop the rural areas. As I mentioned earlier, the main rationale why BEACON is huge – P1 billion to electrify 1,000 barangays — is because we want it to have a big impact so that it will encourage others to join our efforts. We could have come in with US$1 million and do another US$1 million later on. But it does not attain the objective. We’re starting this big project hoping that the others will follow suit in their own ways. Other private firms can build schoolhouses, build roadways, for example. There is really a need today to develop the rural areas and the problem is indeed large. They always say that the private sector just wants to get something from the government. Now it is time for the private sector to give something back to the government in a rather big way.”

The Mirant executive said that setting an example through BEACON is important, explaining that “after all, the project is not about an investment in Manila or Quezon City. It is an investment in remote and rural areas. We are in fact getting away from the traditional site-related programs (where company benefactors only focus on their host communities) and are shifting to community development on a national scale. This means we go to places where we do not have generation assets. We are going nationwide when we only have all our plants in Luzon.”

BRIGHTER TOMORROW Government’s electrification project, as of December 2001

Nonetheless, this is not the first time that Mirant has pioneered private sector participation in support of national development. Mirroring its entry into rural electrification, the company first entered the Philippine market to provide a solution to the energy crisis in the early 1990s. Pioneering the Build-Operate-Transfer scheme, the company’s innovative spirit provided the leadership to harness the private capital to contribute to national development. It is with this mindset that Mirant Philippines has undertaken Project BEACON. With BEACON, Mirant aims to replicate its business success to the success of its corporate social responsibility programs.

Project BEACON is in support of the Department of Energy’s O-ILAW Program. Launched in 1999, the O-ILAW Program aims to complete the electrification of all barangays by year 2006. According to latest data as of December 2001, about 7,095 barangays (16.9% of the country’s 41,995 barangays) are still unenergized and, therefore, unable to join the mainstream of development. Mirant Philippines pioneered private sector involvement in the program by energizing 90 barangays in Quezon and Camarines Sur, 29 barangays in Oriental Mindoro, and 24 barangays in Occidental Mindoro.

According to Allan Paul Flake, Vice President for External Affairs of Mirant Philippines, the company has fully completed electrification of their host communities. “There is not a single community out there that remains unelectrified. That is why we thought of helping the government outside our areas in a big way through Project BEACON, a very high impact-project and is part of the govern-ment’s priority concerns. In fact, BEACON is considered outside as the largest corporate social responsibility program ever implemented by a single private corporation.”

The hard fact is, over 7,000 barangays are yet to be provided with electricity either by the government or private sector volunteers. While most of the populace especially in the metropolis could not stand a few hours without electricity, residents of these underdeveloped areas have not tasted electricity in their homes all their lives!

Some of the stories of the impact of Project BEACON were recounted: how a resident in one of the beneficiary areas in Mindoro was overwhelmed by the possibility of finally watching the popular soap opera Rosalinda, or other shows for that matter, within the comforts of his own home; also, how some some unenergized fishing villages in Bicol, for example, did not have cold storage facilities accessible to them and therefore suffered a lot of wastage from their catch. Thus, they resorted to drying to prevent spoilage when they could have marketed them fresh and commanded higher prices. Or, how some rice producing areas still do not have rice mills and thus have to transport harvests a long way to the town for the milling. But, with Project BEACON, lives of these rural folks will indeed change. They will finally see light.