The amount that the municipality of Chisinau is to pay in heating benefits for the 2008/2009 season constitutes 16.691 million lei and could rise by 1 million lei after all the data is processed, Info-Prim Neo learned from Ion Margineanu, the head of the utility “Infocom”, which handles roughly 70 percent of the heating bills in Chisinau. According to Margineanu, since late 2008 when the City Council adopted a new regulation to allot heating benefits there have been processed the applications of 16,600 beneficiaries. Prior to the regulation, Chisinau residents paid half of the heating bill, the rest being covered from municipal money. The new regulation instituted some eligibility criteria to afford heating benefits to families on low income.