General Director of “Power industry of Serbia” Dragomir Markovic said that that company at the end of July had almost 100 billion of outstanding debts for electricity from end users.
Households owe 43 billion, enterprise 51 billion , and government agencies around five billion, Markovic said in an interview with the newspaper company’s EPS”kWh”.
He said that the EPS hasn’t paid his suppliers about five billion, of which three billion debt is to private companies.
Asked whether the long-standing practice of non-payment of electricity bills will continue when the market opens, Markovic explained that the industrial consumers in the open market will have to pay or be left without electricity, and the issue of exclusion of non-payer will no longer be just on the EPS .
When it comes to business performance of EPS in the first half of the year, he pointed out that there is a problem with liquidity, not only because of the price of electricity, but also because of debts.
“However, for the six months the total net financial result – profit of EPS was 7.7 billion dinars, and from business relationships we are positive with the 14.1 billion dinars,” said Markovic.
“This was mainly contributed to a stable exchange rate and cost savings. This year’s profits could be guaranteed if exchange rates remain stable. In the conditions of deteriorated electricity charges and high exchange rates, one can only guarantee a positive financial result of business relationships “, said the director of EPS.
Markovic said that the real indicator of the financial result of business relationships, and the EPS was the result of recent years “has always been positive.”
“However, when balance join the income and financial relations, on which more or less EPS doesn’t have affect (exchange rates, the correction of claims over 60 days …) total score know to be negative,” he explained.
“However, this does not mean that the the EPS is looser because that minus doesn’t compensate from external sources, for example, the budget, but affects the liquidity problem. The consequence is the delay in payment to suppliers with an average of 30 to 65 days.
On the other hand, the average time of users payment to EPS is about 255 days. And that’s the main reason for the occasional problem with the EPS and liquidity, “said Markovic.
Source: Serbia Energy, extracted text from Kwh EPS magazine
