Ukraine intends to increase power price delivered to Moldova

Ukraine tries to force Chisinau to revise the agreement on the price for electricity supplied to the Republic of Moldova, because of the increase in price for natural gas, Vladimir Antosii, the Minister of Industry and Infrastructure declared on Thursday, July 13 in the Parliament. The minister made this declaration when presenting the information about the situation regarding the natural gas supply. According to Antosii, the agreement with Ukraine on power price expires in January 2007, but Ukrainians are already trying to increase the tariff to at least 3 cents per kwH, compared with the present tariff of 2.52 cents, justifying it by the increase in price of the natural gas. According to the minister, 51% of the Ukrainian power is produced at nuclear power plants, so the request of the Ukrainian side is unjustified. At the same time, the quoted source declared that the internal power producers will not increase the price “even if they will try to”. Referring to the increase of the price of natural gas delivered to Moldova, Antosii said that this decision is not political, but technical, because the increase was applied to the former USSR countries. The minister declared that a more complex research on the consequences of natural gas price increase will be made after the tariff for final consumers will be settled. However, according to the minister, although the import price increased by 50 %, the tariff for the consumers using monthly less than 30 cubic meters will increase only by 25% and the nominative compensations for 11 categories of citizens will be kept. Several opposition MPs were unpleased with the result of the talks on natural gas, as well as of the information presented by Antosii. The representative of the Government was though supported by the MPs of the communist faction. According to the agreement signed at the end of the last month with “Gazprom”, starting July 1, 2006, Moldova imports Russian natural gas at a price of USD 160 / 1000 cubic meters, compared with USD 110 in the first semester.