The fact that the Bucharest City Hall voted on Wednesday to increase the heating tariffs granted by Radet to Bucharest customers by up to 33%, in some cases, is a brave measure to be taken because the prices no longer reflect the market conditions, told energynomics.ro Emil Calotă, the vice-president of the market regulating body, ANRE.
“Invoices will not increase, and the subsidy could be accompanied by a lower VAT rate,” Calota said. In addition, the subsidy regime could change radically from April next year, when the new minimum guaranteed or “insertion” income law might come into force.
As energynomics.ro reported earlier, the rise in the GCal price for Bucharest could add to Radet’s revenue requirement by about 33.2 million euro.
Thus, in the note of substantiation of the decision of the Bucharest General Council approving tariff increases, it is mentioned that the new tariffs were established following “the meeting organized at ANRE (the market’s supervisory body –e.n.) between the representatives of the Ministry of Energy, ANRE, Electrocentrale SA (Elcen), Radet Bucharest and the City Hall of Bucharest”, endorsed “in advance by the regulator”.
“It’s about 140 million lei,” said a source from the market for energynomics.ro. “This will mean new debts of about 350-400 million lei at the end of this year,” added the quoted source.
In the draft decision, price increases of around 31.8-32.9% are foreseen for transport and distribution, and 23.8-30.34% for heat production. “If the services provided by Radet will be adopted, as the price of the heat supplied to the population remains unchanged, it will be necessary to supplement the revenues of Radet by approximately 137,300,000 lei / year (including VAT),” the decision states.
After changes to these tariffs, they will also increase those shown by the district stations and the central next to the Press House. Thus, an additional probability of 13.9 million lei per year will be needed here. Summarized, the two subsidies may reach 151 million lei per year in addition, or nearly 33 million euros.
However, the new subsidies will have to be granted by a subsequent decision. For the current year, the current subsidy rate remains for now at about 484 million lei (almost 106.4 million euro).
