PPC rate hikes to apply as of this Friday
Greece’s Public Power Corporation announced on Monday that electricity rate hikes set to see most households’ bills rise and cuts for most enterprises will apply as of this Friday and not July 1.
The rates adjustment, demanded by the country’s creditors, will entail an average increase in the power bills of domestic consumers of up to 800 kilowatt hours per four-month period amounting to 11.1 percent. This will affect more than 2.2 million households. The same adjustment, concerning the shift toward cost-based rates (and including small consumers and agricultural concerns), will also bring about an average decline in the bills of some 1.4 million small and medium-sized enterprises, such as stores, offices, bakeries etc.
The process for that adjustment started in 2011 so that it would apply from June 2013, but the government negotiated a one-year delay to its application with its creditors, suggesting that, as far as homes were concerned, it couldn’t say where the power was going, whether to the primary residence of households that merit social protection or holiday homes, for example. However no distinction has been made in those three years, so PPC is now asking households to apply for the 49 percent discount offered by the so-called social rates if they qualify for them.
