Alexandu Tanase: The City Hall will subsidize Termocom until the people are able to pay the bills
The City Hall will subsidize Termocom until the people in the country earn enough to be able to pay the bills, lawyer Alexandru Tanase, leader of the Social-Democratic faction in the Chisinau Municipal Council (CMC), told Info-Prim Neo.
Asked if CMC did not give up the idea of cancelling the tariff of 540 lei, which will mean that the Chisinau administration will not have to cover a part of the heating costs from the local budget, Alexandru Tanase said that the City Hall has always given money to this company. But now the question is weather the City Hall can afford to cover a part of the tariff.
Tanase says that they reached the conclusion that it would not be fair to cancel the tariff of 540 lei, as long as there is no project on a new tariff that would establish a new relation between Termocom and the City Hall. During last days’ discussions between representatives of the local authorities and the management of Termocom, the cited source says, the administrator Dionisie Antocel was inclined to cooperate. “This is such a situation when a solution can be reached only by compromise and not by voting. Termocom is a public institution that provides services for the community and the Council must have a responsible attitude,” Tanase said.
Asked if the City Hall could ever take over Termocom, Alexandru Tanase said that the company is now under the control of the judge that supervises the insolvability procedure initiated in 2001. The local authorities, he says, do not have the legal possibility to intervene in the process or to influence the judge’s decision. “The taking over of Termcom by the City Hall depends on how the trial will take place and on what the Creditors’ Council will decide.
Dionisie Antocel does not rule out that the accounts receivable will be liquidated and Termocom will be taken over by Moldova-Gaz or Gazprom.
Alexandru Tanase says that such a scenario should not be excluded. According to him, now Termocom owes over 700 mln lei to creditors and owing to the wear degree of the pipes dating from the 60s, the company’s price could be even lower that the accounts receivable.
At Thursday’s meeting, CMC decided to allocate 33 mln lei to Termocom SA to settle the debt related to the covering of the difference in the old and new heating charges, of 233 lei and 540 lei per gigacalorie. Since the start of the year, the Chisinau administration allocated over 125 mln lei to the company over heat compensations. The local authorities say that the City Hall’s debts for the last heating season could add up to about 300 mln lei.
Until a new heating charge is brought up, the consumers will pay 233 lei per gigacalory for the heat that will be delivered during the next heating season and the local administration will continue to pay a part of the tariff.