Timisoara Mayor Dominic Fritz said on Monday that a very difficult winter will follow for Timişoara and Romania, in the context of increasing prices for heating bills and that he will propose to the Timişoara Local Council (CLT) a doubling of the district heating tariff, limiting Colterm’s proposal that demanded a tripling of the price for the subscribers of the central heating system.
The mayor says that, although it is not a popular decision, he assumes it “as part of a necessary and responsible solution in this situation”.
“I have to choose the right path. And I can only be honest with the people of Timisoara: a very hard winter will follow for Timisoara and for Romania. We are trying our best to keep the district heating standing, even in an emergency condition,” says Dominic Fritz, in a release quoted by Agerpres.
According to the same source, the mayor of Timisoara presents several arguments that justify his measure, including the legal limitation of subsidies for district heating from the local budget and rejects the speech of local liberals, according to which he wants to increase the tariff to pay a fine of 20,000,000 euros which Colterm received because it no longer had the money to buy enough green certificates.
“No company can survive if it is forced to sell at a lower price than it costs to produce. The solidarity of the people of Timisoara, by subsidizing district heating from the local budget, is limited not only by law. (…) We have reached a point where even if we gave all the money from the local budget to Colterm for the subsidy, it would still not cover the price of gas. (…) Because it did not want to cover the bill neither from the local budget, nor from the tariff for the population, the former administration left us over 70,000,000 lei of debts to E.On and another 230,000,000 lei of debts to others suppliers and the state. It also bought the CO2 certificates from 2019 with a loan that we have to pay this year. (…) The PNL speech says that I want to increase the tariff in order to pay the fine that Colterm received because it did not have the money to buy enough CO2 certificates. A real aberration (…). The fine referred to by PNL is currently suspended by the court,” says Dominic Fritz, according to financialintelligence.ro.
He emphasizes that the city hall is in full negotiations with natural gas and coal suppliers, and this requires financial predictability.
Fritz also states that the prices for district heating will not be able to be supported anywhere in Romania only by the population and local budgets, the amounts being much too high and expects as soon as possible “a final Government, with which we can talk”.