PGMN Anchor Antonette Aquino‘s insightful breakdown of her Meralco bill, which included strong calls to revise how electricity taxes are computed, has surged to more than 47,900 shares and 19.6 million views, becoming the most shared post in PGMN history.
Aquino is a multi-awarded financial planner, wealth strategist and one of the most followed Filipino finance creators on TikTok. She used her own electricity bill to show how costs are distributed and why many consumers feel the burden. She stressed that even without leaving her air-conditioning on 24/7, her bill still went up.
Aquino published the post on April 27, showing how nearly half of her ₱9,791.78 electricity bill came from costs outside generation: system loss, universal charges, government taxes and the FIT-All (Feed-In-Tariff Allowance) and GEA-All (Green Energy Auction Allowance).
The post has now surpassed James Deakin’s blockbuster post about the Land Transportation Office confiscating his son’s driver’s license, which recorded 76,000 reactions and 21,000 shares, and even prompted the LTO to change its policy on confiscation and how such cases are settled.
“The middle class does not steal electricity. We do not qualify for lifeline rates. We do not get 4Ps. We just pay full VAT, fund everyone else’s discounts, and absorb costs that should never have been ours to begin with,” she wrote.
The post’s reach has turned a personal bill into a broader discussion on electricity pricing, subsidies and how costs are passed on to consumers.
Lawmakers have echoed her position, including Sen. Bam Aquino and Akbayan party-list Rep. Chel Diokno, who have also questioned why the public is being charged for this.
Aquino made her PGMN debut in October with one of the country’s biggest financial stories: the 1.7 trillion stock market loss and how corruption made every Filipino pay the price.
See her full post here: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1XQdwxS6BA/
