ILOILO city and province cannot aspire to become major investment and business centers while wondering from one day to the next whether there will be enough electricity to keep factories running, stores open, computers connected and production lines moving. The recent warning from Iloilo’s business community should therefore be treated not merely as another complaint about brownouts but as an economic alarm.
Recurring power interruptions and rising electricity rates are already imposing costs on businesses, particularly micro, small and medium enterprises. Operating hours are lost. Equipment can be damaged. Inventory can spoil. Digital transactions are interrupted. Businesses that can afford generators must spend more on fuel and backup systems; those that cannot simply absorb the losses.
And the burden is getting heavier. Iloilo City’s average commercial electricity rate increased from P13.04 per kilowatt-hour in June to P13.58 in August. Businesses are therefore confronted with an especially painful combination: they are paying more for electricity while simultaneously paying for the consequences of electricity that cannot always be reliably delivered. That is not a sustainable environment for economic growth.
Electricity is basic economic infrastructure, as indispensable to modern commerce as roads, ports, telecommunications and water. This is why the concerns raised by the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry-Iloilo Chapter and the Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Iloilo, Inc. deserve urgent government attention.
The danger extends beyond today’s lost sales. Every prolonged outage introduces chips away at Iloilo and Panay’s competitiveness. Investors compare locations. They calculate operating costs, infrastructure reliability and risks before committing capital. Iloilo may have skilled workers, expanding commercial districts and an increasingly dynamic economy, but those advantages can be weakened if dependable electricity cannot be assured. The power problem therefore cannot be dismissed as something for generating companies, distribution utilities or energy regulators alone to solve behind closed doors. Government must demand accountability.
The proposal to review and implement a comprehensive Panay Energy Master Plan deserves serious consideration. Panay needs a roadmap that looks years rather than hours ahead — one that anticipates electricity demand, secures dependable generation and reserves, expands renewable energy and storage, strengthens transmission infrastructure and builds resilience into the system.
The proposed Panay-Mindoro-Batangas interconnection should likewise be pursued with urgency because stronger connectivity with the Luzon grid could give Panay another layer of energy security.
There is also merit in establishing a permanent multi-sectoral Panay/Iloilo Energy Council. Energy security cannot be addressed effectively through fragmented reactions whenever another yellow alert, red alert or rotational interruption occurs. Government, regulators, generators, grid operators, distribution utilities, businesses, academe and civil society need a permanent mechanism for monitoring supply, demand, prices, projects and emerging risks.
Most importantly, policymakers must understand what is really at stake. Iloilo has spent years building its reputation as an emerging center for business, investment and services, but economic ambitions require electricity to power them.
Solving the power crisis is part of economic development. The business community has put the issue in its clearest possible terms: “Power security is economic security.” That should now become the guiding principle of Panay’s energy policy.
Because when the lights repeatedly go out, what is threatened is not merely electricity. Jobs, investments and Iloilo’s economic momentum could go dark with them.
