Economy 3 min read By Alice Ashford
Romanian energy minister says income ceilings for electricity aid under review
Energy minister Dumitru Chisăliță said the income ceilings for energy aid are being reconsidered so that more vulnerable households can qualify, while the government weighs options for extending the gas price cap.
Romania's energy minister, Dumitru Chisăliță, has said the income ceilings used to determine eligibility for electricity aid are being reconsidered, a move that could bring more vulnerable households under the support scheme. The ministry is also examining how the value of the electricity bill subsidy should be adjusted, so that the help provided reflects the actual burden on families.
The concrete proposals have not yet been published and no final decision has been taken. Officials have indicated that the key elements will be made public in the near future. The stated objective is to ensure that more households struggling with energy costs are able to receive assistance, rather than limiting support to a narrow group of recipients defined by fixed income thresholds.
On gas, several scenarios are under analysis for extending the price cap that currently shields consumers from sharp increases. The only figure discussed so far is a support amount of 50 lei, calculated against a reference consumption of 55 kilowatt-hours on average. Chisăliță said he does not yet have the information needed to determine whether a 100 lei level would be possible, and the final form of the measures remains undecided. Any extension would therefore depend on the cost analysis still under way within the ministry.
The minister also set out how the price of electricity is put together. It is broadly made up of three components: the energy itself, regulated charges and tariffs, and taxation. He pointed out that changes to value added tax fall outside the remit of his ministry, which means that a reduction of that tax cannot be decided within the energy portfolio. Each ministry, in his framing, has to act within its own sector, so that measures on the bill's tax element belong to the authorities responsible for fiscal policy.
The discussion of household support comes against the backdrop of a bill structure in which regulated components and taxes account for a significant part of what consumers pay, alongside the wholesale price of the energy supplied. Because aid is calculated on the bill, adjustments to either the regulated charges or the tax element would change the amount a household ultimately pays, even where the eligibility rules are unchanged. This is why the ministry's review of the income ceilings and of the subsidy value is being considered together with the wider question of the price cap.
No timetable for the publication of the proposals has been confirmed beyond the statement that the elements will be shared soon. Until then, the scope of the eligibility changes, the level of any revised subsidy and the final form of the gas measures remain open, and households will not know how the changes would affect them directly.
Source: economedia.ro
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