site.btaCaretaker Cabinet Mulls Natgas Price Compensation Scheme for Businesses

The caretaker government firmly favours compensating businesses for the high price of natural gas, Economy and Industry Minister Nikola Stoyanov said on Tuesday. "As Minister of Economy, I believe this understanding is shared by the whole government. We are firmly in favour of compensation for the price of natural gas," Stoyanov told journalists. "It is wrong to provide compensation for the electricity price and not for the gas price, thus placing some companies in an non-competitive position with regard to other companies." He said a gas price compensation scheme will be proposed to the next National Assembly.

Earlier in the day, Stoyanov opened MachTech & InnoTech Expo 2022, a fair of industrial machinery and technology, robotics and automation at Sofia's Inter Expo Center.

Bulgarian Industrial Capital Association Chairman Vassil Velev, who also participated in the opening, expressed to journalists his disapproval of the Energy and Water Regulatory Commission's idea to subsidize households at the expense of industrial users of natural gas. "The idea has emerged to give cheap gas to the heating utilities and expensive gas to other enterprises. This would put companies out of business and push unemployment up, and people would be unable to earn wages to pay their 'cheap' heating bills," Velev warned.

He argued that in other countries of Europe and the world, cross-subsidization goes the other way, with the economy using cheaper natural gas than households, while energy-poor individuals are supported financially.