By Alena Mae S. Flores

Lopez-controlled Manila Electric Co. has pending petitions with the Energy Regulatory Commission to recover various charges totaling P11.468 billion, the company said yesterday.

Meralco told an investors? briefing that a transmission fee of P5.554 billion paid to National Transmission Corp. (now National Grid Corp. of the Philippines) represented the bulk of charges that the private utility wanted to recover.

Meralco paid TransCo the transmission charges but has not been able to recoup them from consumers due to changes in methods of recovering the adjustments. The transmission charges covers the period June 2003 to July 2007.

?Hearings at the ERC [Energy Regulatory Board] have been completed, awaiting decision,? Meralco said.

The power distributor is also waiting for decision on its appeal to allow Meralco to recover generation charges for September 2006 to June 2007 worth P2.7 billion.

The ERC, in its ruling last year, said the P2.7 billion ?should be borne by Meralco and should not be passed on to its customers as part of its generation charge.?

Meralco said it also had pending underrecoveries for system loss charges worth P1.295 billion, inter-class subsidies of P1.054 billion and lifeline subsidies worth P864 million.

So far, the ERC approved the collection of P10.8 billion of Meralco?s generation costs and carrying charges.

Meralco is also waiting for approval of its peformance-based rate application with the ERC. The power regulator earlier granted Meralco a P0.1449 per kWh average increase in its distribution charges that was scheduled to take effect in the November billing.