AKP deputy opens electricity hike to debate in commission
Turan Yılmaz - ANKARA
Turkish residents have been reacting to the recent 6.8 percent hike in electricity prices, AKP Bursa deputy Cemalettin Kani Torun said during a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Commission. “Almost half of the bill is for distribution costs.”
Electricity prices rose by 6.8 percent on Jan. 1 in Turkey.
In an information note signed by Deputy Energy Ministry Undersecretary Seda Sadık Aytekin, the Energy Ministry declared that rising costs in distribution and transmission, as well as the increase in the minimum wage, were to blame for the rise.
“There have been some rises in the acquisition costs of Turkey’s Electricity Trading and Contracting Company (TETAŞ) due to rising parity and other costs. A 2.6 percent rise was needed in the TETAŞ price, which had an impact of around 1.9 percent on the final prices. The rising need for transmittance investments and the parity fluctuations of the state-run electricity transmittance company, TEİAŞ, have also been reflected to consumers with an impact of around 2 percent over the final prices,” said the statement.
Some other increasing costs resulting from several factors, such as the rise in the minimum wage, were also applied to the electricity prices, said the statement, adding that the charges for missing or stolen electricity were shown in the bills in a consolidated way rather than separately to “prevent any judicial woes.”
“In the earlier periods, many legal actions were filed by consumers against market players for the cancelation of these costs, and the players lost serious amounts of money in the courts mainly because they had needed to apply these costs within the existing regulations,” said the statement.