Too few energy consumers in Romania have so far changed their energy supplier, only 80,000 in the last four months, compared to the rate of 500,000-600,000 people who do this every month in a mature market, such as the United Kingdom’s, Răzvan Nicolescu, energy expert and former minister, said on Wednesday.

“Regarding the liberalization of the energy market, there are a few things that concern me: from the data announced by ANRE, I saw that over half of consumers are still under that penalizing regime of last resort supplier, meaning millions of consumers, and I would like to see their number decrease,” said Nicolescu, according to Agerpres.

He also said that he was surprised by the very small number of consumers who changed their supplier, only 80,000 in four months, out of the 800,000 that came out in the free market.

“For me, this is the indicator that shows the maturity of liberalization, namely how much people have understood what they have to do. Unlike advanced countries. I follow what is happening in the UK, which has three times more consumers than us, 24 -25 million, compared to 8 million in our country, I mean households, and 500-600,000 change their supplier every month, while we changed 80,000 in four months, in a period of maximum emergency, at the beginning of liberalization. It is extremely little and in the end liberalization must bring benefits to consumers, a fair price and the possibility to change its supplier,” added Nicolescu.

The electricity market in Romania was completely liberalized on January 1, 2021, and household consumers can change their supplier at any time.