The price of electricity for Ukrainian enterprises should not exceed its export price, Chairman of the Federation of Employers of Ukraine Dmytro Firtash has said.

"Everyone understands what role the price of electricity plays, for example, for the non-ferrous metal sector. It is half of the production cost, and this is an issue of thousands of jobs. The Federation of Employers of Ukraine will submit the issue to the government," he said in Zaporizhia at a meeting with heads and owners of over 200 largest and medium-sized enterprises.

As reported, from April 2012 electricity for export to all destinations on the basis of government's decisions is bought on the wholesale electricity market in the country at lower prices (the wholesale price without subsidy certificates) than the price paid by most Ukrainian industrial consumers.

In 2009, export of electricity without subsidy certificates was permitted to Belarus and Moldova, from April 2102 – to Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Poland.

Preferences for the purchase of cheaper electricity without subsidy certificates from March until the end of 2013 were recently given to electrometallurgical companies.

Ukraine boosted electricity exports by 51.5% or by 3.312 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2012 year-over-year, to 9.745 billion kWh. The main exporter of Ukrainian electricity since 2011 has been DTEK energy holding company.

The subsidy certificate is a compensation of losses from supply of electricity to some categories of consumers, mainly to households, paid to power supply companies.

The share of subsidy certificates of the wholesale market price of electricity grew by 1.07 percentage notches, from 27.16% in 2011 to 28.23% in 2012.