Minister of Economy Bekim Nezri officially confirmed – the liberalization of the electricity market, instead of January 1, 2015, we completed in 2020.Full market opening for electricity which was to affect households and small firms is prolonged. Government introduces five new stages, the first of which will start in 2016 and fully liberalized electricity market will get even Macedonia in 2020.
The decision, says Nezri is made after a series of analyzes and calculations which have shown that liberalization start of January 1, 2015 will bring electricity more expensive for households from 17.7 to 20 percent.
“For these reasons the Government decided to amend the Law on Energy and the Assembly submit the draft law amending the Energy Law which envisages liberalization of the electricity market to be done in two stages. The first stage will delay the liberalization of electricity from 1 January 2015 until 1 July 2016. The second stage will start to be implemented from July 1, 2016 and will be implemented in five phases. In the first phase of the July 1, 2016 with the capacity eligible consumers will gain consumers in 2015 have achieved a total power consumption of over 1,000 megawatt-hours. In this category fall about 100 customers with total expected consumption of 300 gigawatt-hours of electricity.
The second phase, will begin on July 1, 2017 when consumers become qualified companies earned a total consumption of over 500 MW in 2016, or approximately 150 customers with an expected consumption of 300 GWh per year.
On July 1, 2018 consumers with electricity consumption of more than 100 megawatt-hours in 2017 and 900 customers with expected annual consumption of 300 GWh.
The fourth phase will begin on July 1, 2019 when consumers become qualified consumers with a consumption of more than 25 megawatt-hours in 2018, ie about 3,500 customers with expected annual consumption of 300 GWh fifth and final phase will begin on July 1, 2020 year and it will liberalize the market for the remaining 65 small customers and approximately 600,000 households with a total annual consumption of about 3,200 gigawatt-hours, “the minister explained.
He noted that as of April 2014 about 44 percent of electricity market in Macedonia is liberalized. The closest to Macedonia is Montenegro with 24 percent market liberalization, followed by 13 percent in Albania, Serbia and BiH with eight per cent. Because of this decision minister does not expect objections from the European Union and Energy Community.