By KYIV. Sept 5 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The expected effect of the increase in electricity prices for the population and the increase in price caps by 40-80%, depending on the hour of delivery, which is to stop the build-up of debts in the electricity market and cover the costs, in particular, of Energoatom as the main executor of special obligations to provide electricity to household consumers (PSO), will come in the future, Deputy Head of the President’s Office Rostyslav Shurma said.
“This effect will be after Energoatom reaches at least 80-90% of its design capacity, about a month after the start of the heating season. So, from November-December, Energoatom will receive money that will cover current expenses and in part – debts for previous periods,” he said in an interview with Forbes Ukraine, published on Tuesday.
According to him, through the summer repair campaign, Energoatom is operating at almost half of the installed capacity in the controlled territory of Ukraine (since the end of August, six of the nine nuclear power units available to Ukraine have been in the system, their capacity is 5.4 GW), so there is no effect of the decision to raise prices.
At the same time, he noted that no one expected “that this decision would become a panacea, that the energy market would balance the next day.”
“Everyone understood that there would be a delayed effect of this decision. Now no one is talking about a collapse, that something has gone wrong. Everything is going according to plan… Thanks to the decisions taken, we have at least stopped the problem from growing: debts will not grow. If ZNPP is returned under control within a year or a year and a half, it will even be possible to pay off all these debts,” the deputy head of the President’s Office believes.
At the same time, he explained Energoatom’s request for compensation from the budget for approximately UAH 35 billion for the PSO implementation by saying that with the occupation of the Zaporizhia NPP, the company lost more than 40% of production and revenue while maintaining almost all of its expenses, which affected the financial result.
At the same time, he stressed that bringing the tariffs in line with market prices can finally “cure” the situation on the energy market, but during the war the authorities cannot do this “from a social point of view.”
“The authorities cannot shift such a responsibility and such a burden onto the people. We will have to do it gradually,” he stressed.
