After months of silence, Minister Zorana Mihajlović has informed the Serbian public that the country has had to import electricity worth 530 million euros due to the financial disaster facing the national power company EPS.
When asked how much money has been spent on these electricity imports due to the collapse of EPS in December last year, Mihajlovic said that from December 12, 2021 to April 20, 2022, due to the “catastrophic management of EPS” by its CEO, Milorad Grčić, the company had to import a total of 2,231.6 GWh of electricity, worth 530.7 million euros.
“Unfortunately, this is not the only cost. We lost much more because EPS missed the opportunity to be an exporter at the time when electricity reached record market prices this winter, and instead, due to the catastrophic management of the now former top executives, EPS ended up importing electricity,” said the Minister, adding that Serbia has not imported coal so far, but that the government has approved the import of four million tonnes of coal by the end of 2023, a quantity that EPS lacks, so this will be an additional cost for the national power provider.
The chairman of the Departmental Committee on Economy and Finance of the Freedom and Justice Party, Dusan Nikezic, recently pointed out that an average of 5 million euros is lost every day due to the import of electricity. “We have repeatedly stated that what is happening in EPS is not the result of an isolated incident, or a ‘perfect storm,’ as Aleksandar Vucic puts it, but the result of many years of unprofessional management and ruthless drainage of money by companies close to the Serbian Progressive Party, while the entire energy sector is facing a production and financial collapse,” he added.
(Nova, 10.05.2022)
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