The problem with the growing electricity bills of the municipalities

The problem with the growing electricity bills of the municipalities was one of the topics discussed today by the mayors of the four largest municipalities in Bulgaria - Yordanka Fandakova, Zdravko Dimitrov, Ivan Portnih and Dimitar Nikolov. Street lighting is one of the activities whose costs are fully covered by local taxes and its drastic increase leads to cuts in funds planned for other municipal activities. BGN 753 thousand is the street lighting bill of the Municipality of Varna for November 2021, as for the same month a year earlier it was 338 thousand. In the Municipality of Burgas the invoice increased from BGN 182 thousand in November 2020 to BGN 354 thousand a year later. For Sofia, the growth is from BGN 986 thousand for street lighting in November 2020 to over BGN 1.7 million for 2021. In the municipality of Plovdiv the bill for street lighting for December 2020 is BGN 246,798 thousand, and for the same month 2021 is over 600 thousand BGN. So far, the municipalities have received compensation only for the months of October and November, covering between 20-30% of the increase, bTV reported. The mayors of the big cities demand that a mechanism be found as soon as possible and in dialogue with the government to compensate the municipalities for the increased electricity and gas costs, which have a critical impact on key urban systems such as street lighting and public transport.. As an example of the extremely critical situation in public transport, the mayor of Sofia pointed out that in November this year alone, the electricity bill for the metro has increased more than 3 times. " BGN 1.1 million is the electricity bill for the metro in November 2020, and for the same month in 2021 it is BGN 3.5 million. The situation is similar in the capital`s electric transport, " Fandakova explained. The increase in the electricity bill of the electric transport in the municipality of Varna is over 2.7 times and the increase in the price of methane for the buses is 2 times. Without urgent state compensation for public transport in major cities, municipalities will not be able to provide quality service in 2022. Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom are just some of the countries that have provided billions of euros in additional compensation from the state to the municipalities for the maintenance of public transport, which are among the worst affected by the crisis. Experts predict that in 2022 the growth trend of major energy sources will continue. This requires at the stage of planning the state budget for 2022 to set additional funds for the maintenance of municipalities. At the request of the mayor of Sofia Municipality, a club of the largest Bulgarian cities will be established in the National Association of Municipalities. " The biggest cities have problems that are very different from those of other Bulgarian municipalities. This requires the mayors united to put the issues and possible solutions before the various state institutions ", explained the mayor Fandakova.