Debt-plagued Public Power Corp. (PPC), the state-run and dominant electricity utility in Greece, on Tuesday announced that it was slashing the discount being extended to prompt-paying customers, from 15 to 10 percent, sparking a heated reaction.
The decision, taken by the ATHEX-listed utility’s board of directors, also approved what it called the start of negotiations with industrial customers over new rates, i.e. price hikes.
At the same time, the board said rates kilowatt rates for medium and low-voltage customers will remain unchanged.
In a related development, Environment and Energy Minister Giorgos Stathakis, speaking on a local television newscast, said the discount cut was a decision entirely affecting the utility itself and not the government’s jurisdiction.
Moreover, he deflected sharp criticism by the opposition by saying the current leftist Tsipras government cancelled a plan by New Democracy party, when it was in power, to fully privatize the utility, adding that PPC remained a “primary energy producer, adapting to a more competitive environment”.
Finally, he said the still unresolved issue of selling off PPC’s lignite-fired power units is not an obstacle to receiving a one-billion-euro tranche from Eurozone partners and the ECB, given that the PPC and Greece’s privatization agency issued another international tender for the units via a “fast track” procedure.
The previous tender was declared null and void, after offers were judged as too low.
In a scathing reaction on Wednesday, a main opposition New Democracy (ND) MP who heads the party’s energy portfolio, Costas, Skrekas, charged that the “orchestrator of the movement ‘I won’t pay’, (Prime Minister Alexis) Mr. Tsipras and the appointed, by him, board of PPC, after four years of scandalous policies, has transformed the country’s biggest enterprise into a deeply problematic company with damages exceeding more than one million euros a day… they are sending the bill of their incompetence to the Greek citizens, and, in fact, to the responsible (customers)”.
