The energy crisis must not allow huge profits to be made for some players, but the measures taken must aim to reduce prices and not just collect money for the budget, argues the Intelligent Energy Association (AEI).
“The Intelligent Energy Association proposed as early as August 9, 2021, a plan of measures to limit gas price increases (price increases being the essence of the crisis). The lack of these types of measures, such as those proposed by AEI, favored or even determined gas price increases. Concretely, if these measures were applied, as early as August 2021, we would have had lower prices than those in the market today, companies that did not stop their activity, etc,” claims the president of AEI, Dumitru Chisăliță.
The measures proposed by AEI are:
– the separation of the trading activity from the gas supply activity, carried out by the same company, the gas circuit could be followed and to avoid that the gases purchased for the own customer portfolio are used speculatively in the market,
– the obligation for each invoice to explicitly contain the commercial margin that each seller practices, there would have been a transparent process to see who practices high margins/profits,
– the regulation of the commercial margin, we would not have come across a case that a gas supplier on a regulated market (!!!) (on top of that – a supplier with 100% state capital), could increase its profit from 8.46 lei/MWh to 2400 lei/MWh from one month to the next, a 282-fold increase!!! (according to the data published by the supplier on its own page),
– the imposition of a progressive taxation model of suppliers’ profits, but with the sole purpose of reducing the price level and not just to collect money for the state budget, we would have seen much lower prices on the market today,
(https://asociatiaenergiainteligenta.ro/ro/scrisoare-deschisa-catre-guvernul-romaniei-realizarea-unui-plan-de-masuri-de-urgenta-energetica-pentru-a-reduce-ul-socio-economic-determined-impact -from-the-energy-price-increase-2/ )
Analyzing the estimated prices at the end of 2021 and the quantities expected to be consumed in 2022, we can estimate that the state has budgeted the collection of VAT, excise duty, royalties, dividends, dividend tax, profit tax, etc. about 43 billion lei, says Chisăliță.
“Taking into account the same estimates from the beginning of 2022 (quantities and prices), capping/compensation schemes would have required approx. 17 billion lei/year 2022, money from the state budget to pay the differences between the capped gas price and the price paid by supplier”.
The price of commodity gases traded on the markets increased from the weighted average price of 347 lei/MWh in January 2022 (according to ANRE’s gas market report, published on ANRE’s page) to approx. 461 lei/MWh (weighted average price estimated by AEI) in August 2022 (an increase of approx. 32%). In the same period, the average price to the final consumer, estimated by AEI, increased (in the absence of the institutions’ intervention) from approx. 485 lei/MWh to 1270 lei/MWh (an increase of 161%).
Thus, the state is put in the desperate situation of paying for the capping scheme (AEI estimate) an amount of approx. 39 billion lei for the year 2022 (2.3 times higher than the amount estimated in the spring). At the same time, taking the estimated prices and the quantities expected to be consumed in 2022, we can estimate that the state has collected and will collect to the budget in 2022 from VAT, excise, royalties, dividends, dividend tax, profit tax, etc. approx. 86 billion lei, respectively by approx. 43 billion lei more than budgeted..
Thus, according to the estimated calculations made by AEI, the gains following the gas price increase are sufficient to cover the compensation scheme.
“The Ministry of Finance allocated less money to the Minister of Energy, which can be a justification for overtaxing suppliers (other than producers), but it is not a justification for increasing bills for non-domestic electricity consumers.”
