Skopje, 18 June 2024 (MIA) - The VMRO-DPMNE led government will restore the price of electricity with a tendency to reduce it when the new period of price regulation begins, which is from January 1, but at the moment it cannot intervene, VMRO-DPMNE leader and PM-designate Hristijan Mickoski said Tuesday.

As regards indications by experts that the new government can immediately offer a lower price at which ESM will sell electricity to the universal supplier, and that it can cover 100 percent of the needs of consumers on the regulated market, instead of 85 percent as provided by the decision of the caretaker government, he said it was not possible, because the tender for the purchase of electricity from EVN has already been announced and should end by Friday.

"I would like to hear what that solution is, and we will immediately implement it, but without threatening the supply of consumers. If the tender is terminated, it will threaten the supply of consumers, so I promise that at the next price regulation on January 1, the price of electricity will be restored with a tendency to reduce it," Mickoski told Sitel TV. 

According to him, another problem is that the price of distribution, i.e. the low voltage level owned by EVN, and the price of transmission of the state company MEPSO are regulated once a year.

"It happens at the beginning of the year, we cannot regulate it now, at half a year. Only the price of the electricity that the company competing in the tender delivers to the supplier can be regulated. That is in the ESM case. ESM has no legal obligation to deliver 100 percent, not even a few percent. The point is that everything that is happening at the moment can be corrected and will be corrected on January 1," Mickoski pointed out.

He announced that in the first working days of the new government there will be a foreign investment in energy worth EUR 450 million, and then in the first 100 days there will be two new foreign investments, an expansion of two existing investments, as well as a government-to-government loan of one billion that he has already announced, which, he noted, will mean great liquidity for the budget and money that will be allocated for capital investments.

Photo: MIA archive