Board President on 2017 AGMA

Congratulations to our dear member-consumer-owners for attaining another milestone as we happily celebrate together our 37th Annual General Membership Assembly.

Indeed, 2016 was an exciting and challenging year. Our numerous achievementsdeserve to be commended to inspire us further in realizing our vision and mission.

Our theme, "A New Dawn for BENECO: Pursuing Global Competitiveness", fittingly describes our determination to become a world-class electric distribution cooperative by way of consistent delivery of quality service at the least cost to members and end-users. In relation hereto, we are proud to convey to you that BENECO was awarded a special citation by the National Electrification Administration (NEA) for charging the lowest power rate in the country for the year 2016, "thereby promoting the best interest of its member-consumer-owners (MCOs) and making the EC more competitive."

It cannot be denied that one of the factors for competitiveness is not only the quality of service but affordability of electricity. Lower power bills means additional disposable income which will benefit the social and economic condition of our members and residential consumers. For the industrial and commercial consumers, affordable power bills will make their respective economic endeavor more viable in the market. Cheaper cost of power will make thelocalityconducivefor businesstherebyattracting more investors specially from the BPO and tourism industry sectors.

As we endeavor to pursue global competitiveness, we encourage our valued members to actively support our projects that will ultimately bring down the cost of electricity for BENECO consumers. We firmly believe that the BENECO business model for development of minihydro generation plants within the franchise area will be most advantageous to our members and end-users while maximizing benefits due to local community.

On the technical aspect, we are also pleased to inform you that we have tremendously invested in the acquisition of various modern systems and equipment for the installation of SMART Grid facilities without any increase in the distribution rates charged to end-users. We expect that our electric cooperative will soon one of the benchmarks in the region for adapting the latest technology in the automation of distribution network as well as customer service.

These are just some of our ongoing projects in concurrence with our beloved President's priority agenda to bring down the cost of electricity as a strategy of becoming globally competitive in contending with our Asian neighbors.

Once again, may we express our utmost gratitude to your continuous patronage necessary to sustain the level of our collection efficiency.

Maraming salamat po at mabuhay tayong lahat!