National joint-stock company Naftogaz Ukrainy CEO Andriy Kobolev believes that the main defeat of the company in recent years is that it could not explain to its ultimate beneficiaries - the people of Ukraine - all the benefits of the gas market reform.

"Naftogaz should start working directly with the population - the end consumers of gas and heat," the head of the company said, speaking about one of the ways to solve this problem during the Conductors of Changes forum, which takes place in Kyiv on Tuesday.

In his opinion, if the company could work directly, then problems similar to those that have arisen now with delays in supplying the heat in Kryvy Rih or Smila could be solved with profit for the end user.

Kobolev noted among the reasons for the negative attitude of the population to the reforms in the gas market also their incompleteness and the government's delay in switching to monetization of subsidies for end consumers, instead of which an intermediate model for transferring subsidies to regional gas supply companies was introduced.

"We, however, managed to achieve great victories in the foreign market, but on the domestic one we are not very successful yet," he said.

As an example, he cited the inability in recent years to get access to the subscriber base of end users, which would make it possible to obtain information on actual gas consumption and allocated subsidies in compliance with all personal data protection requirements.

In the absence of the access, Kobolev estimated the volume of gas consumption annually attributed to the population at preferential prices up to 2 billion cubic meters, or up to $700 million.