KEDS has requested an increase in electricity prices of 30 to 40 percent from the Electricity Regulatory Office, but it is the citizens who say that such an increase in bills would be unaffordable for their standard of living. Meanwhile, the civil society proposes to go with the application of block tariffs, which would affect greater savings of electricity.
KEDS Communications Officer, Adlum Ramadani, says that their request to ERO came as a result of the increase in the import price.
“We have made a request for an extraordinary review, regarding the issue of price, this is an exclusive right that belongs to the decision-making body, which in this case is ERO. We as KEDS and KESCO can not comment on how much the increase will be, but in terms of the demand we have submitted, it is somewhere around 30-40 percent request for price increase, but of course the final decision or the last word will say ERO”, he says.
He says that currently consumers are having a stable supply of electricity and that there are no outages, however, he says that in recent days energy consumption has increased also due to lower temperatures.
“With the decrease of temperatures, the consumption by our consumers also increases, especially by those who use electricity for heating, it is a considerable number of them and of course this then directly reflects on the progress of the electricity system in place. However, so far we have enabled this supply to be stable and of course with the increase of temperatures we expect that the situation will improve too. A few days ago we broke the consumption record which reached (at peak times) up to 1 thousand 250 megawatts and of course such a thing has come as a result of high consumption … Regarding the issue in question , currently imports are being covered by KEK, as well as by KEDS and KESCO, so the consumption of our customers is being covered, but we will wait to see how this situation will continue, since as I mentioned earlier we are in “An energy crisis situation,” he said.
Rinora Gojani from the Balkan Green Foundation, says for KosovaPress, that there will be an increase in the price of electricity due to the increase in the price of imports, but that she emphasizes that it would have been better if the block tariffs were applied.
“As our request, in fact, in this case ERO, in addition to reviewing the price of energy, should also reconsider the re-introduction of block tariffs in the system, so that citizens who consume less, pay less, while for those who do not save energy, the energy to be more expensive… The block-tariff has turned out to be a good mechanism even based on the analysis we have done as civil society, seeing how much has affected the increase of energy consumption per household. In fact, this has been one of the mechanisms that some 81 percent of citizens have behaved differently at the time when the block tariffs were applied… We have called and we think that the management of ERO, has a more acceptable approach to this the proposal, so we will not stop advocating for these changes and I very much hope that they will meet take this into consideration”, she says.
On the other hand, it is the citizens who say that the increase in the price of electricity will be unbearable for them, saying that food products have also become more expensive recently.
Osman Daku says that the increase in the price of electricity will worsen the already difficult economic situation of the citizens.
“Every item whose price increases should follow the preliminary analysis on the basis of which it increases, as the price of that item grows, in this case of electricity, it should have a preliminary analysis of what is growing. Then, taking into account the income that citizens have, how much income they have, what is the budget, how much is their ability to afford that increase in that price … The higher the price, the lower the standard,” he says.
Citizen Pranvera Rufati also emphasizes that the increase in the price of electricity will negatively affect the living standard of citizens.
“We know what standard our population has, especially pensioners, people with social assistance, it will have a very negative impact on the standard of living,” she said.
Another citizen, Enver Hoti, says that the institutions do not take into account the standard in which the citizens of Kosovo live by allowing the price of electricity to increase.
“The standard is very low and ecen the small increase affect the population” he says.
Meanwhile, the increase in electricity prices and the return of block tariffs are just some of the requirements that the Energy Regulatory Office in Kosovo (ERO) is considering for the new tariff structure.
Detailed data about this structure, ERO says that it will make public in early February.
