Nagy-Bege (ANRE): Gov't's measures cover almost all electricity consumers, half natural gas consumers

The mechanism for compensating household energy bills announced by the government covers almost all electricity consumers nationwide and over half of the natural gas consumers, the vice-president of the National Regulatory Authority in the Energy Area (ANRE), Zoltan Nagy-Bege, said on Wednesday, agerpres reports.

"The mechanism presented by minister Popescu today after the government meeting is a compensation mechanism. It is very important from the point of view of the message sent to the European Commission and to potential investors in this field of electricity or natural gas. (...) We have a compensation mechanism for the final consumer, we limit the expenses of certain categories of consumers with these utilities and we directly compensate the suppliers from various budget sources, if they are identified, of course. (...) In Romania, almost 90% of household electricity consumers have a consumption below 200 kilowatts every month. Also, almost all [natural gas consumers - editor's note] in Romania will be covered, as there is a tranche of consumption that probably covers more than half of the consumers," Zoltan Nagy- Bege told Digi 24 national television broadcaster on Wednesday evening.

The ANRE vice-president mentioned that the electricity compensation mechanism proposed by the government would cover almost half of the current value of the tariff applied to consumers who have not chosen an offer on the competitive market - the universal electricity service - although he admitted that this tariff will increase from January 1.

The vice-president of ANRE underlined that he refers only to the actual price of electricity, without taking into account the taxes that are added to it.

He claimed that the compensation mechanism announced by the government would cover the price increase applied on July 1 by gas suppliers to consumers who have not yet concluded a contract on the competitive gas market.

The Minister of Energy, Virgil Popescu, announced on Wednesday that the Romanian state will compensate the electricity bills for approximately 13 million Romanians who have a monthly consumption between 30 kWh and 200 kWh.

For electricity, the difference between the lowest price on the market, 64 bani per kWh, with all taxes included, and the average, 82 bani per kWh, will be compensated. "For gas, we took a reference price of 255 lei per kWh, more than double compared to last year. Up to an annual consumption of 1,200 cubic meters, all types of homes will benefit from an aid of 25pct of their invoice value," he added. Suppliers will invoice these discounts.