Restoration Ministry working to unblock municipal heating companies' accounts, increase their fund shares – official
The Ministry for Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine is working on relevant decisions to unblock the accounts of municipal heating companies and change the proportion of funds distributed to their accounts, which currently stands at 35/65, where the municipal heating companies’ share is 35% and the share of Naftogaz Ukrainy is 65%, Director of the Ministry’s Life Support Systems Department Vitaliy Surai has said.
This was discussed during the roundtable talks "Transformation of municipal heat supply enterprises into energy companies: What is changing and how to act" at Interfax-Ukraine, organized by the Association of Critical Infrastructure Operators and the Association of Ukrainian Cities.
"Currently, all these issues remain open-ended, so we are constantly moving them forward," Surai said.
He said the debts of municipal heating companies and debts owed to them significantly affect the sustainability of their operations, which ultimately has a negative impact on preparations for and the passage of the heating season.
Surai also said the Development Ministry did not support a government draft decision to cancel Naftogaz’s supply of gas for electricity production for municipal heating companies under public service obligations (PSO).
"Given the cost of gas for enterprises that produce both heat and electricity, such a decision is a barrier to the development of the system we are building. The market is good, but when we are at war and today need to survive and have our own sources, certain preferential conditions are also needed so that enterprises are interested in building distributed generation, so that even during a blackout the region is able to function in the mode of uninterrupted service provision," the ministry’s representative said.
As reported, at the same event, Executive Director of the Association of Ukrainian Cities Oleksandr Slobozhan said Naftogaz Ukrainy had blocked the accounts of 69 municipal heating companies through the courts, which threatens to completely halt their operations, disrupts the implementation of Resilience Plans and makes preparations for the upcoming heating season impossible.