Romania’s program to shield households and smaller businesses from soaring energy bills will cost about 16 billion lei ($3.27 billion), Energy Minister Virgil Popescu said Wednesday.
He added that the coalition government is also considering extraordinary taxes across the energy supply chain.
Romania has capped gas and electricity bills for households and most other consumers up to certain monthly consumption levels and reimburses suppliers for the difference.
But already high prices are set to rise further, boosted by the war in Ukraine and European sanctions against Russia.
Popescu said the country’s independent energy regulator ANRE had initially estimated the support package, which runs until the end of March 2023, would cost 40 billion lei, before revising it to 16 billion lei.
A previous support package, which ran from November 2021 to March, cost 4.5 billion lei, ANRE said.
The government has already imposed emergency taxes on natural gas and electricity producers, but has stopped taxing traders and suppliers.
“We are thinking a lot about taxing the whole chain: production, intermediaries, suppliers,” Popescu told reporters, adding that the government had not yet finalized the details. “Taxation should be as fair as possible. We tax everyone when profits are too high.”
The left-wing Social Democrats, the largest party in parliament and part of the governing coalition, support replacing the system of caps and subsidies with regulated prices from next year on a short-term basis, but the coalition has yet to agree.
Source: Capital
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