Municipal council will not vote for water tariff increase in the eve of local elections - Vasile Ursu

Interim mayor Vasile Ursu believes that water tariffs will not be changed in the near future, as the municipal councilors represent political parties that cannot vote for a water tariff increase in the eve of local elections. Ursu considers that this issue should be managed by another body than the Chisinau Municipal Councilor (CMC), an organization that could establish compensations for the unprivileged people. The interim mayor was pleased with the fact that the Parliament will examine in the near future a draft law that will allow the National Agency for Regulations in Energy (ANRE) to approve water tariffs, using the example of the prices of gas and electricity. In the meeting from Thursday, November 2, CMC did not discuss the problems of “Apa-Canal” JSC (ACC), claiming that the council does not know the situation in this company. According to the ACC director, Constantin Becciev, ANRE presented calculus to the council according to which the factual water price is MDL 8.73. This tariff was calculated by the national regulation authority a year ago, but the water tariffs reexamination was delayed because the new figures were not coordinated, according to the current legislation, with the Terrain Construction and Development Agency. CMC was supposed to decide in its Thursday meeting whether a single tariff will be applied to the population and economic agents or the tariffs will be different: higher for economic agents, which should compensate for a smaller population tariff. According to the cited source, one of the options was that the population should pay MDL 6.5, compared to the current MDL 2.62, and economic agents – MDL 15.9 compared to the current MDL 14.9. At present, both the local authorities and the ACC leadership classify the situation at the enterprise as critical. In the 9 months of this year alone losses of MDL 46 million have been recorded. At the moment, the enterprise has accounts payable of over MDL 270 million and approximately the same amount of accounts receivable.