the Office of the President.” Increasing capitalisation The presidential action giving added impetus to the corporation in the implementation of its power development program is embodied in Presidential Decree No. 938 issued on May 27, 1976, which further increased NPC's capitalization to ₱8 billion and its principal indebtedness to ₱12 billion. It also authorized NPC to contract foreign loans of up to U$4 billion. Incurring massive amounts of foreign debt was partially justified by the desire to pursue nuclear power. Marcos requested that National Power Co. (the government owned electric utility) negotiate a deal to buy two nuclear reactors. Two proposals were submitted by General Electric and Westinghouse Electric Corporations. General Electric submitted a proposal containing detailed specification of the nuclear plant with estimated cost of US$700 million. On the other hand, Westinghouse submitted a lower estimated cost of US$650 million but the proposal did not contain any detail and specification. The presidential committee tasked to oversee the project preferred General Electric's proposal but this was overruled in June 1974 by Marcos, who signed a letter of intent awarding the project to Westinghouse, despite the absence of any specification and details on their proposal. Similarly, Marcos disregarded wishes and advice of the National Power Corporation, the government-owned and controlled corporation responsible for electricity in the country. Marcos's decision was driven by the low cost earlier proposed by Westinghouse. Also Westinghouse used connections to strike the deal. But by March 1975 after the contract was awarded, Westinghouse's cost estimate ballooned to US$1.2 billion without much explanation. The final construction cost reached to $2.2 billion for a single reactor producing half the power of the original proposal. Many problems identified in earlier stages remained throughout construction, as reported by inspectors, though all these were denied by Westinghouse to save their company's image. On October 6, 1977, with the creation of the Department of Energy under Presidential Decree No. 1206, the NPC was attached to the new department for purposes of policy coordination and integration with sectoral programs. President Marcos increased the capitalization of NPC to ₱50 billion. The record-setting action was made through the issuance of Presidential Decree No. 1360 on April 24, 1978, which effectively established the NPC as the biggest corporation in the country. The increase in capitalization is expected to afford a greater degree of corporate flexibility in the implementation of the countrywide power programs and corporation management. In