MANS filed to the Supreme State Prosecutor’s office a criminal complaint against Minister of Economy Vladimir Kavaric and Chairman of the Board of Directors Electric Power Company of Montenegro (EPCM) and the Montenegrin Electric Transmission System (METS) Srdjan Kovacevic and Dragan Laketic for abuse of the office power during the design of the balance of electricity for 2014 at the expense of consumers and in favor of energy companies whose losses in business and arrogant management again should be paid by the citizens of Montenegro through increased electricity bills.
With this filling the leaders of the Ministry of Economy and Energy Companies are charged on the basis that they projected consumption and transmission of large amounts of electricity than it is realistically expected to be achieved, which is overflow on the consumers through increased electricity bills. Specifically, as greater amount of electrical energy that are used or transferred via electricity lines, the larger the income that the Energy Regulatory Agency (RAE) granted EPCM and METS, and on the other hand consumers pay more expensive not cheaper electricity.
With the energy balance for 2014 planned spending is close to 3,3 thousand gigawatt hours of electricity, of which three direct buyers, Aluminium Plant Podgorica, Steelworks in Niksic, and Railways of Montenegro will spend a quarter or almost 800 gigawatts. The rest refers to distribution customers, ie. households and small and medium industry, as well including technical losses in the distribution network.
However, it is clearly indicative that the EPCM projected increased distribution of consumption by as much as two percent, while avoiding to explain a reason for that. When is taken in the account that households, small and medium economy since 2010 until today average consume the same amount of electricity, which is about two thousand gigawatts per year, it is obvious that there is no real reason for this increase.
On the other hand, the analysis of comparative data on the level of technical losses indicates on the suspicion that EPCM manipulated in the way that it transferred part of technical losses on the account of increased in total distributive consumption. In fact, since 2010, technical losses are average planned at a level of about 440 gigawatts, and this year their amount should be lower, because the permitted rate of losses is 11 percent of the total distribution of consumption.
Accordingly, EPCM planned technical losses for 2014 to 274 gigawatts, which means that the difference of about 150 gigawatts transferred to energy distribution. So basically, there will be no greater consumption by households and small and medium industry, but EPCM part of technical losses completely illegally transferred on the expense of customers.
Beside that, METS projected balances for 2014 and planned that it will make electricity transfer close to 5,6 thousand gigawatts, from which on a transit of others energy systems is related 2,1 thousand gigawatts. Having in mind that in the past three years transit was on a level of about 1,8 thousands gigawatts, it is unclear here what is justification of this increase.
There is no doubts that increased use of distribution network of EPCM secures more income approved by RAE, but also it is well known that the distribution network is used less for a third, because of lowered business in Aluminium Plant Podgorica and Steelworks Niksic. Even RAE not long ago openly admitted that the consumers in Montengro continue to pay use of distribution network in larger amount, but it did nothing to stop that. What might possibly stand behind this METS’s reasoning is the fact that Montenegro’s budget for 2014 includes the solution that with METS’s profit to be paid stolen electricity by Aluminium Plant Podgorica from the European interconnection an a level of 4 million euros.
Analyzing the balances in the previous years, MANS founded that EPCM ans METS every year pumping projections of electricity consumption and transmission, that in the end is a huge burden for the customers, while RAE in conjunction with these companies and the Government, calculates electricity prices on the expense of the consumers, which for a long time should be subject of an independent prosecutor’s investigation.
MANS
