Regulatory Agency for Energy (RAE) with its methodologies enabled the Electric Power Industry of Montenegro (EPIM) that in the period from 2012 to
2015, at the expense of the citizens of Montenegro and on the basis of technical losses switch unbelievable 24.7 million, which was even 10.9 percent of the total allowed revenue for the three-year period, which amounted to 227.2 million.
This information is just one of many that clearly confirms the damage extend of consumers of electricity in Montenegro, and how the other side the
EPIM illegally profiting. Technical losses are the cost of energy company and consumers are not obliged to pay negligence in the work of the EPIM, which for years keeps tens of millions of euros in the accounts in private banks, rather than invest them in the development of distribution networks and in that way reduce the level of technical losses.
Technical loss is the cost which should be reimbursed from the profit of the EPIM, not from the pockets of citizens, because in a situation where citizens always paid losses, the EPIM is not motivated to invest in the quality of its services.
Most of the members in the Parliament of Montenegro adopted a clear approach that technical losses should not be on electricity bills and in this sense there is not too much room for interpretation of how should it look a new methodology for the calculation of electricity.
Methodologies for calculating electricity prices are not above the Energy Law and RAE leaders are obliged to respect the laws of this State, and not to roughly trample on them and hypocritically to announce that they will see how to take a stand toward a clear definition of the legislator that the consumers are not obliged to pay enormous technical losses in the distribution network.
Such announcements are more than irresponsible and they are in the domain of the criminal responsibility, so in any legally regulated system a serious State Prosecutor would already deal with a series of unlawful decisions on the electricity price that RAE in previous year adopted to the detriment of consumers, and only in favor of energy companies, enabling them to profit millions.
MANS for a long time suggests that toxicity of RAE’s decisions is not shown only through illegally approving technical losses, but also through the fact that the energy companies are authorized and huge revenues based on operating costs, electricity prices or refunds on the investments.
Clearly, the energy companies “pump out” costs of business, such as salaries, services or materials costs, and they are arbitrarily approved by RAE without valid documents to prove that the energy subjects really have so many expenses. When it comes to the price of electricity it is known that the RAE uses a formula from the Leipzig Stock Exchange, instead of establishing the actual cost of electricity production in the domestic power plants.
Finally, RAE to the energy companies approves as an expense and millions for the investments, although they are not realized by planned dynamics. On the contrary, MANS has repeatedly pointed that the EPIM as investments shows and regular maintenance, such as the cutting of vegetation or painting of substations, which RAE persistently tolerates, although it is more than clear that they are not a real investments.
All of these illegal actions of the regulator offset through the consumers, who pay electricity bills, not only in significantly higher amount than the real, but bearing in mind the actual service quality of electricity supply, since blackouts and outbursts from the system almost become commonplace.
Because all of this, it is finally time to end RAE’s harmful behavior, and the first step in a series of steps should certainly be an urgent changes in the methodology for calculating the price of electricity and removal of technical losses from the costumers’ accounts.
MANS
