Romanian government proposes reducing taxes in energy sector

The government is currently working on a raft of measures that will lower the impact of the deregulation of the electricity and gas prices for households and industrial consumers, said Constantin Nita, delegate-minister for energy, on Thursday.

Authorities are looking to lower the co-generation tax and the electricity transport tariffs, especially for the interruptible consumers.

Nita said the electricity bills would lose 7 to 10 percent by year end, due the change of the renewable incentives system in July. He added the electricity price would have increased by EUR 30 for each MW if some green certificates weren’t deferred.

Read more about

Agile Networks Technologies and Salesforce become ALRO’s partners to increase sales digitalization

read more

“There are companies dissatisfied, rightly so, with the energy price, comparing it with that of Europe. We need to think of a support scheme for the consumers of electricity and natural gas,” said Nita, during the Energy Business Summit.

Nicolae Havrilet, president of the energy regulator ANRE, said the gas prices for industrial consumers will add 10 to 11 percent this year.

Romania aims to deregualte gas prices for industry by 2014 and for households by 2018. The electricity prices will be fully liberalized for industry and households by 2014 and 2017, respectively.

Authorities will have to notify DG Competition, the anti-trust arm of the European Commission, regarding the support scheme for industry.

The minister commented that big industry has to pay between EUR 61 to EUR 68 for each MW, including the co-generation tax, the transport tariffs, excises and VAT.

He added the Association of the Big Industrial Energy Consumers (ABIEC) has presented a series of support scheme for industry, describing the French model, where 90 percent of the electricity basket for steel producers is covered from nuclear.

Steelmaker ArcelorMittal and aluminum producer Alro are some of the biggest energy consumers that decried the current energy taxation, which they argue is hampering their competitiveness.  

Ovidiu Posirca