Bislimoski: Unplanned electricity import of EUR 30 million due to unauthorized migration from free to regulated market
Skopje, 7 November 2022 (MIA) – Due to a trend of moving from the free to the regulated electricity market, which first started with the municipalities, an unplanned electricity import of EUR 30 million was made until June 30, 2022, President of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), Marko Bislimoski said Monday.
“Due to this trend, an unplanned import of electricity of EUR 30 million was made until June 30. As of July 1 and until now, until the beginning of November, no imports have been made,” Bislimoski told Bloomberg Adria.
Instead of ESM placing these amounts of electricity on the regulated market at a price of EUR 48 per MWh, he added, it produced them to meet the needs of the municipal enterprises and other companies that first started the trend of migration from the free to the regulated market.
“ESM could sell this amount of electricity on the free market at much higher prices. It's good that this trend will stop by making a special decision and everyone will be in the part of the market where they should be,” Bislimoski said.
He noted that most of the municipalities in the country, in order to reduce their costs for public lighting, have established smaller companies that deal with public lighting, and then this continued with companies in the country.
“ERC detected this trend in March and April 2022, and notified the relevant institutions. Because of this, certain actions have been taken and according to the information I have, the Government, in accordance with the decree on state of crisis in the electricity sector, will make a decision ordering all these consumers to return to the free electricity market as of January 1,” Bislimoski added.
“Unfortunately, we had such a situation which was first started by the municipalities in the country and the trend continued. In terms of price, we are still waiting for the data, so as to be able to give more specific information,” said Bislimoski.
