PPC cuts discounts for consistent customers

Public Power Corporation is reducing its electricity bill discount for consistent customers as of April, as well as the prepayment discount, due to its increasing financial woes.

The utility’s board meeting on Tuesday decided to cut the 15 percent timely payment discount to 10 percent from next month, and the discount for prepaid bills from 6 percent to 4 percent, in the face of major liquidity problems.

The discount reduction is the last in a list of measures to bolster the company’s revenues that PPC’s administration has been examining for months, originally tabling demands for the introduction of a carbon emissions charge or a System Marginal Price levy in order to contain the pressure from the soaring costs in the wholesale power market.

The clear response by Energy Minister Giorgos Stathakis to any proposal that would result in an increase in power bills has now forced PPC to take back a third of the discounts offered in July 2016.

The decision to cut the discounts a few days before the publication of the 2018 financial results reflects to a great extent the deterioration of the utility’s fundamentals both compared to 2017 and the first nine months of 2018, when PPC recorded losses of 299.5 million euros.

Source:ekathimerini.com