While the increase in the price of electricity for households was nominally limited to just under 10 percent, Ilija Dimovski from VMRO-DPMNE warns that it will be far greater.

One way to obscure the price hike is in the abolition of the afternoon period of lower energy pricing between 14 and 16h. Many households timed their heavy energy consumption such as washing for this period of the day, and this is expected to put the total price increase to about 15 percent.

But according to Dimovski, the public is being misled about the full extent of the increase with the transfers of public funding to the state owned ELEM/ESM energy company. ELEM is ordered by the Government to provide all household needs in 2022 at the recently increased price, but because its production collapsed after years of mismanagement and gross corruption, the company is forced to provide the energy through imports, which are far more expensive. To cover the cost of imports, the Government transferred 86 million EUR from the state budget to ELEM – the budget which is filled by taxes from the same households who are now being told by the Government that the price increase is “just 10 percent”.

Through taxes, every citizen paid additional 48 EUR energy. Every four member household is paying 192 EUR more, or 11,808 denars. This amounts to another monthly electricity bill of 984 denars per household. If you normally pay 2,000 denars a month for electricity, your bill is now 49.2 percent higher, Dimovski calculated.