Macedonia is about to face Electricity Monopolly
By Biljana Vasileva Trendafilova
Macedonia has the highest prices for the heating energy and telephone in the region, but still the lowest prices for the electrical power. This will probably change because of the new position of the company ELEM, which is one of the three companies formed after the transformation of the state company called ESM.
Latest law changes stimulate ELEM to become monopoly, so, besides the possibility to produce electricity, the company can now sell it and also import it. A shock for the citizens was the latest increase of the energy for 13,6 percent so now people complain that they spent almost 30 percent of the salary for electricity bills.
The market for producing heat energy is not yet liberalized and the heating company Toplifikacija, (that produces and distributes heat energy in Skopje, the capital of Macedonia) is considered to be the largest natural monopoly beside several smaller companies whose primary occupation is to distribute the heating energy. At the moment there are almost 11.000 court cases against Toplifikacija because of the extremely high bills that people believe are miscalculated. The latest increasing of the heat energy was for 60 percent which was the reason why 1.500 clients requested to be disconnected from the system.
Earlier only two monopolies
Telecommunicaton market several years ago faced only two monopolies, one in the fixed line network and one in the mobile telephony. The market has been liberalized, but the inflated prices didn’t go down. The greatest number of complains people have on high telephone bills from Telekom, who was monopoly in the fixed line network till recently. Citizens complain on the price of the impuls, the expensive subsciption and the high bills who can hardly be disproved at court.
A new monopoly has been located in the second mobile operator, Cosmofon because of the concentration of the capital there after the company has been sold to the Deutsche Telekom, which also owns T-Mobile, the first mobile operator. This firm was fined with 4 million euros, that is considered to be the largest ammount ever pronounced for a monopoly in Macedonia.
The state Comission for protection of the concurrence is the only institution that can sanction every misuse of the market. But, the comission can hardly go through the panalties mostly because of the complaints that companies hand in the court, who often decides on their behalf.
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