The Energy Regulatory Agency in its latest response have not denied any allegations of MANS relating to the operation of that institutions and in that regard such a public addressing of the leaders of RAE we see only as an attempt to force the MANS to stop with pointing at the long-term adverse decision that RAE brings at the expense of the final consumers.
Technical losses are significant item on the electricity bills and consumers for years pay enormous losses that are the classic negligence in the business of Electric Power Industry of Montenegro (EPCG), because it does not invest enough in the development of the distribution network, but tens of millions of
euros holds on the accounts in private banks. The attitude of the legislator in terms of technical losses is unambiguous and MANS repeats again that neither RAE, nor anyone else, is not above the law of this state, but their disrespect is basis for criminal liability.
Changes to methodologies are not only necessary because of the elimination of technical losses from electricity bills, but also and for a number of other contentious matters in them, such as how RAE determines a regular operating expenses of energy companies or how it determines the production cost of electricity and return on investments.
Specifically, all existing solutions in methodologies RAE created in a way that can arbitrarily determined them, and a practice so far showed that it always did to the detriment of final consumers, but as a benefit of the energy companies.
How much methodologies favor energy companies in particular shows the fact that to the companies is guaranteed an income that RAE approved, regardless of
circumstances that occurred in the meantime. So to the Montenegrin transmission system (CGES), in the three-years period, RAE guaranteed income, which is based on assessment of current consumption in which Aluminium Plant Podgorica (KAP) will operate at full capacity, what MANS has already warned.
As in the meantime, KAP halved capacities and uses half electricity, and with methodologies CGES guaranteed income as KAP operates at full capacity, then RAE totally in unjustified way, to provide profit for the CGES, a part of this cost retained in the final bills of the consumers, and simultaneously imposed an additional fee for EPCG, which that company is obligated to pay based on electricity exports from the country.
Precisely this fee, which is measured in millions, EPCG for months does not pay, and because of it it has launched legal proceedings against CGES, while in this time it is very doubtful whether it will RAE at some point and in which way this fee spill over to consumers’ electricity bills.
MANS for a long time points out that thanks to the controversial methodologies of RAE final consumers in recent years provide tens of millions of euros net profit to the energy companies, and citizens pay twice as high electricity bills compared to a few years earlier, although on the other hand they did not get a higher quality of service, but on the contrary – blackouts and the dissolution of energy network are more common than ever earlier.
Finally, it is stunning courage of leaders from RAE to indicate qualifications at the expense of MANS’s work, especially when one takes into the account that these qualification come from those who brought wrong decisions to damage citizens damaged and therefore they must be accountable before the competent institutions of this country.
In this regard we remind that the issue of liability of leaders of RAE one day would have to be raised, and MANS will soon submit to the Supreme Public Prosecution voluminous evidence which are collected in previous years, in order for the competent authorities to check the basic doubts about the severe abuse of the office power and decision-making that damaged consumers on behalf of profit of energy companies.
MANS
