Experts from the National Energy Regulatory Authority made several scenarios last week regarding the impact of a VAT reduction measure on energy bills, and the difference would be, in the case of a 9% VAT, from the second semester, of 900 million lei, compared to last year’s revenues, ANRE president George Niculescu declared on Tuesday.
“It is a proposal that the Regulatory Authority and the experts from the Regulatory Authority have thought about and, during the past week, we have made several scenarios regarding the impact on invoices of a VAT reduction measure. Now, I am not an expert in taxation and neither are my colleagues from the authority. Therefore, our calculations were made for a tax reduction of up to 9%, it being well known that in Romania there are different VAT rates, 5%, 9%, 19%. The scenario that the Regulatory Authority ran is framed at the rate of 9%/year. Obviously, the measure will apply to prices that will be invoiced to household and non-household consumers starting with July 1, and the calculations were based on the following ingredients: we estimated the consumption from July to December 31, by consumption tranches, both for households and non-households; we estimated, based on historical data, the rates that suppliers have in the customer market and we superimposed on this data the offers available in the price comparator, in such a way as to determine the price for each supplier for household and non-household consumers, allocating them the market share they currently have. We do not know how customer portfolios will migrate after July 1. So we work with the data we have available at the moment. The price comparator shows us prices from 1.02 to 1.66, for Bucharest, offers that are currently available in the Regulatory Authority’s price comparator, including VAT”, explained Niculescu, according to Agerpres.
Thus, he added, the starting point was the idea that in the first and second semester of 2024, at the capped prices, from ANRE calculations, the state collected VAT worth 6.844 billion lei.
“And, starting from here, we took the first semester of 2025 with the capped prices, because they are still capped, and estimating the same consumption as in 2024, for the second part of the year, with the same customer portfolios, we got a cumulative VAT for 2025, semester one and semester two, of 8.856 billion lei. In the second semester, there are contract prices with 19% VAT. The VAT difference is 2 billion lei more. If the prices were the contract prices, as they are in the comparator and the VAT remained 19%, the state would collect approximately 2 billion lei more”, specified the ANRE president, when asked what he thought about the Energy Minister’s proposal to lower the VAT rate on energy.
On the other hand, Niculescu emphasized, applying the 9% VAT scenario only for the second semester, the Romanian state would collect a total of 5.9 billion lei in VAT this year, respectively a difference of only 900 million lei, minus, compared to 2024, when the VAT was 19%, applied at the capped price.
The Minister of Energy stated on Tuesday that the relevant ministry has proposed to come up with measures to reduce certain costs to lower energy bills and one of the solutions may be a lower VAT rate, but the decision will be up to the Government and the Ministry of Finance.
“I think that in the short term we can take into account certain adjustments. Any Romanian can go through the invoice they receive, any company can do this and see that we include more components and what we have set out to do is to come up with measures to reduce these costs on as many components as possible. We are looking at VAT and trying to have an honest dialogue with the Ministry of Finance about how much is currently collected in VAT with compensation-capping and what it would mean after July 1, how much would be collected, perhaps, with a lower VAT rate than 19%. Of course, it is against the trend, if you want, we are aware of this, but at the same time we are looking at, for example, Greece, which also has high electricity prices for similar reasons or for similar causes to what is happening in Romania and where VAT is 6%. We want to help the economy, we want to be more competitive, we want Romanians to have lower bills too? Maybe a reduced rate is one of the solutions. It’s true, we can propose, but the decision will be up to the Government and, of course, the Ministry of Finance,” explained the Minister of Energy.