Crimea is included in the First price zone of the wholesale electric power market

The information was given by Deputy Head of FAS Vitaly Korolev on 20 October 2016 at a workshop on tariff regulation in Yalta.

At the outset, he gave statistics of the relevant decisions made by FAS Board. For instance, in 2015-2016 the Board had 48 meetings and made 299 decisions (1).

“For the first time tariffs are set below the inflation level. Thus, through the tariff policy the government creates favourable conditions for consumers and enables development of small and medium business”, said Deputy Head of FAS. 

Vitaly Korolev outlined the immediate FAS plans for 2017 tariff campaign, including:

-         Fixing the ceiling minimum and maximum tariffs for transmitting electric power and heat energy

-         Fixing the ceiling tariffs for heat energy for combined generation of electric and heat energy over 25 MWt

-         Adopting consolidated forecast balance for generating and supplying electric power (capacity) under the frame of the “UES Russia” by the subjects of the Russian Federation for 2017.

Deputy Head of FAS also gave a set of measures designed to enhance the quality of regulation:

-         Implementing the methods of norm setting and reference (standard) costs

-         Improving approaches to the procedure of agreeing upon investment programmes and control over their execution

-         Stepping up requirements to regulated organizations

-         Creating mechanisms that stimulate increased efficiency of the work of regulated organizations.

According to Deputy Head of FAS, colossal efforts were undertaken to adjust normative legal acts: “The documents on regulating providers of last resort with use of the analogue comparison method and the guidelines for estimating sales mark-ups are at nearly ready”.

Vitaly Korolev paid special attention to a draft law enabling stage-by-stage tariff reduction for electric power in the regions in the Far East and raising them to the average Russian level. He expressed hope that the draft amendments will be adopted already during the autumn session by the State Duma of the Russian Federation.

Deputy Head of FAS highlighted a new priority principle of regulated organizations: “profit for quality”. It is based on stimulating mechanisms. The size of estimated entrepreneurial profit must depend on reliability, the quality of services, energy saving and increased efficiency.

Regarding the housing & utility complex, Vitaly Korolev reported about several important documents that will form the base element of regulating competition in this area:  the devised amendments to the Fundamental Pricing Principles in the Heat Supply and the Rules for Non-Discriminatory Access, which should enhance equal access to the services of resource suppliers.  

Reference (1):

Electric power industry and heating supply - 66;

Gas supply - 99;

Transport - 56;

Communications – 19;

Oil supply – 14;

Disagreements considered: 45