It is not true that the installation of smart electricity metres will be free for electricity consumers in Serbia, Radomir Ćirilović from the Association for the Protection of Consumer Rights Prosperitet from Novi Sad says and adds that citizens “will bear the cost of them through frequent increases in the electricity price”.
“Someone has to pay for it and we pay for it through frequent electricity price hikes and poor service in terms of voltage. Most of the items on our electricity bills have nothing to do with the production and distribution of electricity,” said Ćirilović.
“In our country, the electricity bill is deliberately made to look complicated so that the consumer would not understand what they are paying”, he said and added that “it is paradoxical that fewer kilowatts of electricity you use, more expensive electricity is for you”, i.e. smaller consumers pay the highest electricity price.
Ćirilović also points out that “60 percent of charges included in the electricity bill have nothing to do with the production and distribution of electricity”.
Nova Ekonomija magazine points out that, ten years ago, Serbia took out over 40-million-euros worth of loans from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and European Investment Bank (EIB) and that this amount was sufficient for the installation of about 250,000 smart electricity metres free of charge.
Currently, around 150,000 such devices have already been installed in Serbia, and thanks to the new project, around 470,000 old electricity meters will be replaced, of which there are close to 3.78 million in Serbia.
(Danas, 08.08.2023)
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