TEHRAN, Iran, Sep. 20
Trend:
Electricity price in utility bills for households has increased while there have been consistent power outages due to drought however industrial sector in Iran has a relatively low price for their consumed electricity, an economic expert told Trend in an interview.
Ehsan Soltani has indicated that electricity prices for Iran's industrial sector were 3.3 cents per kilowatt in 2011 that was one-third of the global price, foreign currency shocks have caused the rate to decline to 38 cents in 2020 that was 4 percent of the average global price.
He noted that the price of electricity for the industrial sector is almost free in a situation that domestic production in the industry is counted based on the US dollar. The industrial power rate is even cheaper than prices for the household in which is paid based on the rial.
Steel industries had 10 times more increase of price for their products in the past three years and are considered as biggest electricity consumers, however, the cheap electricity rate has led to Bitcoin mining in industrial units while there is a shortage of financial resources for development and preserving power production capacities.
The expert noted that the steel production and cryptocurrency mining that generates income for certain groups are the main factors of power cuts in spring.
If officials intend to optimize power consumption and determine the real price of electricity they should impose higher electricity prices for industrial units since they obtain more money from power consumption and can pay more from their profit.
He noted that another factor that increased the price of electricity bills was that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has not reached a result and was not considered in the budget plan in the current Iranian year (started March 21, 2021) and the government faces a high budget deficit, therefore, various paths have been considered to cover this deficit and one of them is increasing electricity bills that is the liberalization of power price.
The widespread blackout hit Iran in summer that was blamed for the searing drought and rising cryptocurrency mining due to cheap power rates