Around 200,000 members of South Cotabato II Electric Cooperative will vote in September on a proposed joint venture with IGNITE Power, a partnership between trilyonaryo Enrique K. Razon Jr. and boxing icon Manny Pacquiao, to help rehabilitate the utility’s aging distribution network.
The vote will be held over four weekends on Sept. 5-6, 12-13, 19-20 and 26-27, SOCOTECO II President Elenito Senit said.
The joint venture requires approval from a majority, or 50% plus one, of all qualified member-consumer-owners under Presidential Decree No. 269, as amended.
“The Board deemed it necessary to hold the voting over several weekends to give all qualified member-consumers ample opportunity to participate in this historic decision,” Senit said.
The proposed deal comes as SOCOTECO II grapples with financial and operational problems. The cooperative reported cumulative losses of P2.1 billion as of December 2025, while system losses have reached 14%, equivalent to about P40 million a month.
Under the rehabilitation plan, funding would be used to upgrade and add substations, replace aging distribution lines and equipment, expand network capacity and deploy newer distribution and customer-service technologies.
The proposal received an initial endorsement from 32,000 members at SOCOTECO II’s annual general membership assembly on July 25, when members also backed a conditional joint venture agreement with IGNITE Power.
SOCOTECO II has formed a committee to oversee the vote and launched an information campaign on Aug. 7 to explain the proposed agreement to members across its franchise area.
The cooperative set Aug. 6 as the cutoff for determining eligible voters and said it would review membership records ahead of the plebiscite to remove duplicate accounts, deceased members and inactive accounts.
