Most of the suppliers have collected the first months of settlement from the state and arrived with the settlement in March – now, close to September 1, but a period of increasing the scheme and prices is coming, which starts with April, say officials of the suppliers’ association , AFEER.
“On GEO 118, after long discussions, most of the companies are in the settlement process – some in January, others in February, others in March… Of course, each company has its own specifics, there is also a member who still provides information to the authorities and clarifications about November 2021 – which seems a bit much to me – it’s a small supplier – but let’s say we’re on the right track, with strict delays. We settle the month of March, although we are almost in September 1st… Regarding regularization – it is worth saying that here there are divergent views on how to regularize the period November-March, the biggest question mark is related to the costs of balancing , which, according to some notes, it is settled, according to others, it doesn’t… The platform is the one that provides the information, and at the moment, it seems that we cannot charge the balancing costs,” says an AFEER member.
“For the time being, nothing has been settled on GEO 27. Data collection has begun. Many of the companies have uploaded the data, and the problems with GEO 27 also relate to clarifications – some have been offered by the competent authorities, others, unfortunately, are still waiting for millions of consumers, it is impossible not to have specific cases or questions between one side or the other,” he added.
Ineligible cases are minor.
“Given that GEO 27 was a little clearer than GEO 118, we hope that the settlement time – you know that in GEO 118 the first settlement was made seven months after the start of the scheme, now we are four months from the start of the scheme with GEO 27, we hope to reduce that period – which, officially, is 45 days…,” added the president of AFEER, Lurentiu Urluescu.
The state has to collect, only from four energy companies, 44 billion lei
The compensation and capping scheme would cost the Romanian state about 40 billion lei annually, but this money can be easily covered from the sums collected from the market.
“There is talk of another rectification in November. We hope that by then the authorities will have a clearer idea of what is needed. There is a discrepancy between the settlement requirement and the budget correction. We made a calculation – you know that ANRE published the monthly monitoring reports, and from the information, the ANRE reports and what was circulated in the press about the collection by the state (of some amounts to the budget), I understood that the state settled 4.5 billion lei through GEO 118, and now it is preparing a budget of about 5 billion lei – one part at the Ministry of Labor, another at the Ministry of Energy. In the 1st quarter, the state collected, from energy companies, about 11 billion lei, of which, from additional VAT – thanks to the broadening of the VAT application base, almost 3 billion lei (1 billion on electricity and 2 billion on gas). From the overtaxation of players, we found only a few state producers in the press – and that would lead to somewhere around 3 billion lei. From dividends related to producers’ profits – 2.6 billion lei. So, somewhere around 11 billion lei collected in the first quarter alone. If we make a simple rule of three – it’s 44 billion lei per year. But it could be more than that, because in the meantime the prices for PZU (DAM) compared to the first quarter have increased”, said Urluescu.
There will certainly be more funds attracted, as the above calculation was made only for four companies, in the chapter of overtaxation and dividends – Hidroelectrica, Nuclearelectrica, Petrom and Romgaz.
