Press Release - Transcript of Sen. Pia Cayetano's statements

DOE Budget Hearing
October 9, 2024

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Senator Risa. Good morning, everyone. Senate President Pro Tempore, good morning. Welcome, Atty Jesse Andres to the world of energy. Like me, you are new to this. I at least will be listening more than talking. I was listening online before arriving here.

I'll just go straight to some of my questions. Good morning, Secretary. Good morning, everyone. I'll go straight to some of my questions, many of which are statements that come from the energy sector directly, and just confirmatory so that we can show our support.

But I'll jump into the last versus first, because I was just listening to the NEA presentation online and I told the Chairman, did I hear it correctly, because I was mobile, that the word you used was, we would be hard-pressed to reach the targets by 2028. And I recall that we did have a short discussion, was it barely a month ago? What were the figures? Is it 16 billion [69B], that you are targeting for full electrification? Tama ba?

---

I remember, we said if we had been able to allocate 10B a year, then we would have covered it, right? And it's exactly the same proposal, the Chairman will recall, in DepEd, we gave the same similar proposal in the last administration. Over 6 years, we can make this happen, like really being disciplined to set aside this amount. Sadly, when you compress that to 3 years, then to 2 years, it doesn't seem feasible anymore. But if you could have really done that over the span of 6 years. I will do my best, with the support of course of the Subcommittee Vice Chair, to push for whatever we can in the remaining time.

But again, I come from my experience more in the education sector, which both of us do. It's a very similar problem kasi yung mga naiiwan is yung mga outliers, diba? Yun ang naiiwan. And to share a strange experience by analogy, when I went to Spain for a totally different topic, this was federalism, it was shown to us that they were very aggressive, I am not sure if it was funding from EU, on building roads, transportation, all over Spain. So it's achieved. But then, what happens is, you look back and they realized halos walang