As we say: slowly but gradually! Households in Greeks saw their electricity bill increasing at 10 percent during each and every year of the economic crisis. And this although the whole sale price decrease.
What do Greeks pay in addition to their electricity consumption so that their electricity bills skyrocket?
Only 53% of the amount on the bill refers to energy cost.
18% are the network charges
12% charges for Renewable Energy Sources
13% Value Added Tax
a fee of €3 for the state TV NERIT
property tax and municipality fees according to property square meters.
Adding all these a bi-monthly bill charging 60 euro for electricity consumption only can soon reach €115, as an example bill from spring 2014 shows.
In comparison, an exemplary bill from 2008 charged just €76 total for two months (electricity consumption, extras included!)
Nevertheless, a data analysis by the European Union’s Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) and the Council of European Energy Regulators (CEER) showed that Greece endured the steepest domestic electricity rate hikes seen anywhere in the European Union for the six years 2008-20013!
“During the 2008-13 Greek recession, the country endured the steepest domestic electricity rate hikes seen anywhere in the European Union, amounting to a total of 60 percent over the six years.
This means there was an annual increase of 10 percent, according to data analyzed by the European Union’s Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) and the Council of European Energy Regulators (CEER) and presented last week in Brussels.
Greek industries also had to cope with an annual increase of 7 percent in industrial power rates over those six years, against an EU average of 4.4 percent. Last year Greece also posted a 119 percent annual hike in the charges related to renewable energy sources.””(ekathimerini)
New price hikes are foreseen as of October. 7.5 million consumers will be asked to pay additional fees for so-called “services for the general interest.” That is that consumers will have to “subsidize” the cost of electricity for consumers in non-interconnected islands and to vulnerable social groups. According to To Vima Online, the increase was originally proposed to be at 25% (!) but as this price hike would electrocute consumers it is expected to be distributed over two to three years.
No wonder, households and businesses owe to Greek Public Power Company DEH 1.37 billion euro!
PS by the same talking we could gladly claim that “Electricity bills electrocute Greek households”!
Yes it’s terrible the rate that electricity has increased…. But one of the reasons the power comapypny has to raise it is because people aren’t paying
Anywhere else I’ve lived in the world if you don’t pay your electric at the end of the month they will give one warning if you are lucky and then cut you off. But here I have come across instances of people not paying their utility bills for years! Yes years not months. There have been recent cases where the owners of commercial properties (Greek) have had to get renters (Greek) out because they hadn’t paid any rent for years only to find once they had gone that the utilities had not been paid for years either!
That’s not even mentioning the thousands of properties on this small island that are still on builders electric, years after the buildings have been completed, so they are avoiding any taxes levied through the electric
I don’t know what the answer is but it’s certainly a mess?
DEH bills skyrocket and are being unaffordable for many people for the extra fees charged.