Bulgaria PM Implicates Power Utilities, Political Lobbyists in 'Robbery'

Bulgarian Prime Minister Borisov (middle) made strong comments about the electricity pricing in the country during the opening of a new kindergarten. Photo by BGNES

Bulgaria’s power utilities and the lobbyists who helped implement the present electricity pricing schemes have committed a “daylight robbery,” Prime Minister Boyko Borisov declared.

“It is a paradox that the state-owned nuclear power plant produces electricity at a cost of BGN 66 per MW/h, while a state-owned hospital pays BGN 138 per MW/h. I fail to see any logic in that! What is the cause of this situation?!”, Borisov stated Thursday, a day after he suggested that the Bulgarian state might revise the deals for the privatization of Bulgaria’s electricity distributing companies, which are currently owned by the Czech CEZ, Austria's EVN and German EON.

The Prime Minister asked why the previous governments had no investment plan for the electricity sale contracts, and blamed the unfavorable situation with the power prices on political lobbyists who secured the deals.

“The State Commission for Energy and Water Regulation (DKEVR) has got to explain why these excessively high prices have been kept for so long. All the people on the Commission have names and are well known. They have been sent there by the political parties. I am calling upon the media to make public the names of all those who have participated in this daylight robbery,” the PM stated.

“It all boils down to two words – political will,” Borisov said vowing to inspect the protocols of all sittings of the DKEVR in order to check how each of its members voted.

He also criticized the media for not investigating the electricity pricing schemes.

“It is as if you were asleep, and you woke up all of a sudden, and started telling yourself, “Wow, how is this possible?!” But I thank you because now you are helping me spread the truth to the people, and when they understand it, they will appreciate what I am doing for them,” the Prime Minister told the Bulgarian journalists.

“This is why I am so revengeful at the moment, and I want to bring the truth to light. Unlike you, I cannot stand and have someone rob me or make a fool out of me,” Borisov stated.

He further made it clear that he would refer the electricity prices and the work of the former DKEVR head, Konstantin Shushulov, to the Prosecutor’s Office. He encouraged the Prosecutor’s Office to act more firmly and more decisively.

In addition, the PM said that he was going to meet with representatives of the power utilities in order to discuss with them the conditions for collecting state dividends.

“I will be very strict with them, and will inspect in detail all of their investments. The Bulgarian state is going to take back from them everything that it has failed to collect yet,” Borisov stated while pointing out that the government was hoping to fill the emerging budget gap from the dividends that it expects to get from the power utilities.

The new measure is expected to compensate for the fact that the government was forced to give up cuts in state spending and state administration that it had planned as an anti-crisis measure that expected to save BGN 450 M in 2010. The Cabinet had to give up this measure after the Constitutional Court declared illegal its decisions for curbing spending because they were not approved by the Parliament.

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