We’re getting the hang of it.

At the rate we’re going, there would be no category  or ranking where the country does not have failing marks.

Don’t look now, but we made it yet again on the global list.   

Here’s a jolt of another feel-bad news: The country’s power rates are now the fifth highest in the world.

“We are not just the highest in Asia in terms of residential rates, but the fifth highest in the world,”  Rep. Raymond Democrito Mendoza of the party-list group Trade Union Congress of the Philippines was quoted by a major broadsheet as saying.

Mendoza said the country’s electricity rate stood at P10.52 per kilowatt-hour compared to those in Austria (equivalent to P11.78/kWh), Italy (P11.84/kWh), Germany (P13.87/kWh), and Denmark (P14.98/kWh).

Note that these countries are highly industrialized and until recently enjoyed robust economic growth while the country’s economy is sputtering.  

“And with several petitions for rate increases pending before the Energy Regulatory Commission totaling to more than P5 per kwh, our electricity rates could be the highest in the world both for industrial and residential users soon,” he stressed.

Earlier, the TUCP and several business organizations, including the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industries, appealed to President Aquino to address the problem of soaring power rates.

The groups said high electricity rates are a big turnoff to foreigners wanting to invest or expand their businesses here.

Mendoza lamented that they have not received a response from Malacañang while Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras dismissed their complaint as “nothing new”.

He said Almendras should have considered their appeal seriously since high electricity cost “renders the Philippine economy as non-competitive with our neighbors like Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and even Cambodia”.

The Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001 is largely blamed for high household energy prices.

“The EPIRA has failed women miserably as 40 percent of households still do not have electricity to date. Higher electricity rates mean additional work, more debts and no rest for women,” said Freedom fro Debt Coalition  vice president Manjette Lopez.

Apart from its demand to put a stop to skyrocketing power rates, FDC also urged the Aquino administration to remove the 12-percent expanded value-added tax on electricity and repeal the EPIRA law.

The group also called on the government to stop the privatization of the remaining assets and contracts of the National Power Corp.

Among these assets are the Angat hydro-electric power plant in Norzagaray, Bulacan; the Unified Leyte Geothermal Plants in Eastern Visayas; and the Agus-Pulangi hydropower complex in Mindanao.