BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 17. Chairman of the Agency for the Protection and Development of Competition in Kazakhstan Serik Zhumangarin announced proposals for balancing the tariff on electricity, Trend reports citing Kazakh media.
“The electricity market is quite large, there are a lot of energy supply companies. Only 22 companies are fighting for legal customers in the market of the capital and because of it today the competition is high. As a result, the guaranteed supplier is forced to compensate for its losses every year by raising the average tariff. It was not intended for such an approach when the system was formed. Recently there was a meeting with the head of state. He supported the start of a pilot project to remove differentiation,” Zhumangarin noted.
According to him, as a result of differentiation last year, the budget overpaid 20 billion tenge ($39.2 million), small and medium businesses - 31 billion tenge ($60.9 million), in general 51 billion tenge, although there is housing assistance on the market that covers utilities.
“Payment of housing assistance amounted to only 750 million tenge ($1.4 million). There are reserves of 50 billion tenge ($98.2 million). We propose to increase the volume of housing assistance. This will lead to tariffs being gradually balanced. Individuals pay more all over the world. Physical consumers pay more than legal consumers worldwide. But the unprotected segments of the population are provided with housing assistance," he said.
"We will carry out information campaigns, travel to the regions. We will try to remove this differentiation by 2025,” Zhumangarin added.