The price of electricity for industrial consumers will increase by more than 30 per cent, National
Electricity Company (NEC) Executive Director Mardik Papazyan told reporters on Wednesday. Papazyan presented NEC's financial report for 2007 to the parliamentary Energy Committee.

NEC has not asked for increasing electricity prices, and the markup is solely caused by the increase of the prices of electricity on the part of power stations, Papazyan said. He said that this time the State Energy and Water Regulatory Commission has correctly transferred the burden of the costs to the end users so that NEC will not sustain losses if the electricity sold to it is increased by 25.4 per cent, BTA reported.

The consumers, both household and industrial, will have to pay for the increased selling prices of electricity by power stations, Papazyan said. Instead of a high markup of electricity prices for industrial consumers, NEC suggests dividing the increase equally between the end suppliers, the electricity distribution companies and the industrial consumers.

Papazyan described as normal the trend of growing electricity prices given the growing prices of all fuels.

For 2007 NEC posted a profit of 42.479 million leva, 17.617 million leva less than the profit for 2006. NEC operates at a loss from its core activity - sale and transmission of electricity since consumption by end suppliers which the company compensates with own funds increased by 6.3 per cent, the financial report says.