10 major players in the Philippine electricity sector

I saw BusinessWorld Top 1000 Corporations in the Philippines 2025 edition yesterday, and I quickly checked some numbers. Today I focus on players in the power and electricity sector (I did not include petroleum players). Here are the changes that I noticed from previous editions.

1. Manila Electric Co. or Meralco remains the top electricity company in the country. In the Top 1000, it interchanges with Petron Corp. for the No. 1 and No. 2 slot.
2. The National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) has kept its regular rank in the No. 23-27 range. It is the transmission and system operator of the country’s power grid.
3. San Miguel Corp. (which has Sual Power, South Premiere, SMGP, Limay, San Roque, etc.) is the largest power generation company. Plus, there are its retail electricity arms.
4. Aboitiz Power (AP, Therma Luzon, Therma Visayas, Therma South…) is the second largest power generation company. Plus, there are its distribution companies VECO, Davao Light, Advent, etc.
5. FirstGen (First Gas, EDC, FGP…) was the third largest. At least, this was the case until 2023. It may not be so by 2025 because its gas power companies have been bought by Prime Energy of EKR.
6. Meralco Power Gen (MGEN, San Buenaventura, PEDC, CEDC…) is the fourth largest. Plus, it has a huge gas plant in Singapore, the Pacific Light Plant.
7. ACEN/Ayala is the fifth largest power generator.
8. The Malampaya consortium, now led by Prime Energy and UC38 LLC, owned by Enrique Razon and Dennis Uy respectively, are also huge players though they are on the upstream side.
9. Companies with coal and gas plants — SMC, AP, MGEN — have the advantage when it comes to gigawatt-hour sales and billion-peso revenues. ACEN and FirstGen are focused on intermittent solar-wind power plus geothermal.
10. Government-owned Napocor remains a loser and subsidy-dependent. PSALM – the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. — should dispose of more big hydro plants, especially in Mindanao, and stop getting subsidies. It should instead contribute dividends to the national treasury.

Private distribution utilities like Meralco, VECO, Davao Light, etc. are a lot better run than electric cooperatives. I still believe that all electric cooperatives should become corporations someday, or merge with private distri-bution utilities, or be bought entirely by distribution utilities.

Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. is the president of Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. Research Consultancy Services, and Minimal Government Thinkers. He is an international fellow of the Tholos Foundation. minimalgovernment@gmail.com