(Podgorica, 17 February 2012) – Citizens will soon start paying the price for the latest example of mismanagement at the Electric Power Company of Montenegro (EPCG), which has failed to secure sufficient and timely supplies of electricity in recent months. The end result will be higher electricity bills for all.
The EPCG claims that it is currently securing incredibly expensive energy supplies at the price of €150 per megawatt, though they fail to mention that at the end of last year they decided to import less electricity and ordered only the amount necessary to cover the projected deficit for the first quarter of this year.
At the time they claimed that they would be importing less electricity than anticipated due to high energy prices on global markets, which ranged between €50 to €100 per megawatt, as well as due to the uncertainties surrounding the demand for electricity emanating from the Podgorica Aluminum Combine (KAP) and the Nikšić Steelworks (the country’s two largest energy consumers).
Today it turns out that the bill for the management’s miscalculations will have to be paid by citizens from their empty wallets. As if this wasn’t enough, citizens are also being threatened with further supply cuts (on top of the fact that many households already had to bear several days without power due to bad weather).
It was these extreme weather conditions that exposed the catastrophic state of the power supply network. Compounding the problem is the fact that the millions that were invested by EPCG’s Italian partner – the A2A energy company – ended up shoring up the liquidity of the Đukanović family’s First Bank instead of modernizing the energy system.
On the other hand, the EPCG’s ‘proven’ partners – like Vuk Hamović’s EFT, with which the state-run power company has been doing business for years away from the public eye – will profit handsomely.
It is worth noting that most electricity import/export contracts are secret in Montenegro, while the tender procedure similarly remains totally outside the public procurement process (due to a loophole in the Public Procurement Law). This has left open an enormous space for fraud and corruption, which we will have to pay for in the end through our monthly electricity bills.
Should I mention that in addition to these costs, citizens are also helping subsidize the interests of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska (KAP’s current owner). KAP uses up half of our electricity even though it could have procured these supplies itself on the open market.
When one considers that the EPCG ended last year with a €40-million deficit, it follows that we’ll also feel the weight of these losses in our pockets.
However, citizens no longer want to pay the price for the corrupt deals at the top, which raises the question of the management’s responsibility for such an irresponsible government policy. Also, the public procurement system must be advanced in order to strip the EPCG of its ability to trade in electricity as it sees fit, while leaving the price of such transactions to be covered by whatever is in the wallets of citizens.
