One of the working scenarios on the table is to keep the compensation-capping scheme after April 1, 2025, and a final decision will be made by February 1, Energy Minister Sebastian Burduja said in a press conference on Thursday.

“We believe that we have arguments for the draft budget to be at least in the same situation as the draft budget and the budget adopted for last year. If you remember, the Ministry of Energy received one billion lei and the Ministry of Labor about the same, which would give suppliers some breathing room. Why is it important? Because one of the working scenarios is to keep the compensation-capping scheme, as it is today, for three to six months, given that the situation in the region is complicated, given the gas price increases, especially on the international market and given that we want to protect end customers. We will make a decision by the end of January. We will meet again within the Interministerial Committee and choose the best option: we keep the current scheme exactly as it is, we better target support for vulnerable consumers and subsidize based on socio-economic data in each household, and not based on the level of consumption, as has been the case so far, or we optimize the current compensation-cap scheme in another way. This means giving up one of the thresholds or adjusting another. We will see. In any case, by February 1 we should have a decision made,” said Burduja, quoted by Agerpres.

At the same time, the official mentioned that, to date, the Ministry of Energy has made payments to suppliers worth 17 billion lei, while the Ministry of Labor has already paid about 10 billion lei.

“So far, the Ministry of Energy has made payments of 17 billion lei within this (compensation) scheme and, from what we know, the Ministry of Labor, somewhere around 10 billion lei. As you know, we compensate for non-household customers, the economic environment, and the Ministry of Labor for household customers. The debts to suppliers, at this time, are not large compared to how much they were in the past. So, at the Ministry of Energy 165 million lei, we also had billions, but there are many requests under validation at ANRE. We work well with the Authority and I am convinced that, as soon as possible, solutions must be found, because the pressure on suppliers is great. There are also a few more delicate cases and we do not want to end up in a situation where a supplier, for example, is unable to pay the distributor and finds itself with its portfolio of customers thrown into the FUI (Supplier of Last Resort, ed.). “This will generate chain effects. We will strive to avoid such a scenario,” the Minister of Energy added.