The expenses of energy companies as a result of the coronavirus pandemic must be recognized in the tariffs paid by final consumers next year, said on Tuesday, Maria Mânicuţă, director for electricity and natural gas tariffs within the National Energy Regulatory Authority (ANRE).

Electricity and gas transmission and distribution operators can recover in tariffs certain extraordinary costs, in extraordinary situations, according to the methodologies, said Mânicuţă, according to Agerpres.

“In the context of the pandemic, the operators have notified us of the measures taken and no measures can be taken without a cash translation. We are talking about an impact on next year’s tariffs. Let’s not forget that nothing is free in the world, not even the pandemic,” she said.

Usually, in the approved tariffs, the costs of work safety and hygiene represented below 0.5%, but, in the current context, they were increased to 2% of the total, continued the ANRE representative, present at a Focus Energetic conference.

“I can’t say exactly what the impact will be, because they came to tell us that they have higher costs, but they haven’t come up with final calculations yet. The operators will come with documents showing that these costs were made in conditions of necessity and there were no better conditions to do them,” Mânicuţă also said

According to her, the impact will not be significant, as the transmission and distribution tariffs represent 30% of the final tariff.

“Think that all operators, including producers, have pandemic costs and the whole pandemic bill will be paid,” the ANRE director added.