The price of electricity paid so far by the population was too low and from January 1, with liberalization, suppliers must buy electricity at higher prices for household consumers, said on Wednesday Bogdan Chiritoiu, president of the Competition Council.

He compared the situation with the one on the gas market before liberalization, where the regulated price was higher than the competitive one, which allowed doubling, last year, the number of consumers operating in the free market.

“Instead, for electricity, the state took electricity from Hidroelectrica and said: I don’t give you the price at which you could sell on the stock exchange, but I look at your costs, I give you 5% over the costs and that’s that. So, it couldn’t be cheaper. The state would then give the suppliers this cheap electricity from Hidroelectrica, and now they have to take it from the market and they won’t take it at such a low price,” said Chiriţoiu, according to Agerpres.

In his opinion, even so, it is not fair for suppliers to automatically switch their consumers to their highest price, i.e. that of universal service.

According to him, declaratively, the suppliers accepted this logic. “We are seeing what is happening. And I look forward to an evaluation, probably in February, I am very curious to see what has happened. They have said that they will offer a reduction from the universal tariff to their lowest offer. This discount must be unconditional,” Chiriţoiu continued.

He pointed out that ANRE has no legal basis to oblige suppliers to offer customers the lowest prices, but that they have committed voluntarily, and if it turns out that they do not keep their word, the Ministry of Energy is ready to issue a ordinance in order to be able to create the legal basis that ANRE needs.