At least 5 million household consumers (points of consumption) out of a total of 8.9 – 9 million electricity consumers nationwide will fall within the consumption ceiling of 200 kWh, announced by the Ministry of Energy for those that will receive aid this winter, Zoltan Nagy-Bege, vice-president of the National Energy Regulatory Authority (ANRE), said on Thursday.

For gas, 90% of the 4 million consumers fall within the consumption ceiling of 1,200 cubic meters per year.

“There are gas consumers that, after July 1 last year, took this step to enter the competitive market, there are 1.1 million consumers who have signed these contracts, which at some point expire. There are some that expire before winter and at the moment the options are quite few for these consumers,”Bege said in an energy debate organized by the Expert Forum.

According to him, on the natural gas price comparator on the ANRE website all offers are higher than those prices that were automatically applied for inactive customers from July 1, 2020 and are also higher than the prices in the contracts on a year starting with any month last year.

“For them, the only option is to accept now an offer at a terrifying high price, there are offers with 200-300 lei only for the price of gas, after which, obviously, they are waiting for the Government’s measure to come and with emotion if they qualify to the level of consumption for which this aid is granted,” said Bege, according to Agerpres.