Electricity Price Hike Inevitable Warn Experts

Energy | August 16, 2014, Saturday // 12:23|  views

Photo: EPA/BGNES

The hike of electricity prices, in a sense, is inevitable, the ex-deputy chair of the parliamentary energy committee Yavor Koyumdzhiev told the Nova TV national channel. 

According to Koyumdzhiev, who is of the former ruling party Bulgarian Socialist Party, which artificially lowered the electricity prices and refused to hike them, in spite the insistence of the EDCs, it was up to the caretaker government to solve two problems to avoid the price hikes.

One is the high prices of electricity from the “green” power stations and the other – the high prices of the so-called “American” thermal power stations – Maritsa Iztok 1 and 3.

Koyumdzhiev could not forecast how big the increase might be, but said it could reach up to 20%.

On Friday the caretaker energy minister Vasil Shtonov also said that price hikes are to be expected. 

According to him, quoted by Nova TV, a shock increase of 20% was unacceptable and the idea was to ease the pain for the consumers by increasing the electricity prices in steps of 5% each trimester, starting in the autumn.

The energy expert Atanas Tasev told Nova TV that the current deficit in the National Electricity Company (NEK) was BGN 1.5 B and this meant that the electricity prices must go up by 50% immediately. “The question is how to do it,” he said. “I think it has to be done gradually.”

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Tags: electricity, price, increase, hike, NEK, Vasil Shtonov, Maritsa Iztok

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