Srpska Power Price Hike: Bodiroga and Crnadak Respond
Portal Capital reports that Elektroprivreda Republike Srpske is preparing a request for electricity prices 50 percent higher. Ognjen Bodiroga of the SDS and Igor Crnadak of the PDP responded.
Households in Republika Srpska, the Serb-run entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina, could be paying electricity bills that are half again as high from January 1, if a plan reported by the portal Capital goes ahead. According to Capital’s information, Luka Petrovic, general manager of the power utility Elektroprivreda Republike Srpske (ERS), is preparing a request to raise electricity and grid fees by 50 percent. The request has not yet been filed, and opposition politicians have already reacted: Ognjen Bodiroga, a member of the SDS presidency, and Igor Crnadak, president of the Republika Srpska PDP.
What does Capital say about the utility’s plan?
Capital writes that Petrovic intends to seek a 50 percent increase, and the Sarajevo daily Oslobodjenje carried its report. If the Regulatory Commission for Energy of Republika Srpska (RERS) gives its consent and accepts the request, households would receive the higher bills from January 1.
Before the request goes to RERS, Petrovic needs the approval of the Republika Srpska government. According to the same report, the government is not currently ready to burden citizens that much.
An unnamed Capital source describes the state of the company as dire:
ERS is financially completely devastated, and it is a question whether even a 50 percent price increase would help it climb out, because RiTE Ugljevik is not operating, HE Dabar is nowhere near being connected to the grid, and HE Bistrica will, the way things look, cost as much as Djerdap.
The same source does not rule out that Petrovic himself floated the 50 percent figure to stir up the public, so he can then say he is asking for “only” 20 or 30 percent. That is the source’s assumption, not a confirmed aim of the director. The source adds that a price increase is justified, but citizens should not pay for poor management:
Electricity will certainly get more expensive and there is a basis for a price increase, but there is no basis for citizens to pay for somebody’s reckless work and careless management of the most important resource of Republika Srpska.
What has the government already said about the utility?
The Republika Srpska government held a thematic session on the state of ERS on November 13 last year. Prime Minister Savo Minic announced afterward that the company would be reorganized through cost rationalization, tighter control and better planning. At the session he said:
Every possible cost must be cut, a work plan must be drawn up, we cannot go into certain mines and overburden removal on the eve of an election. Everything will have to be run from a single place.
Minic also revealed at the time that electricity from the Dabar and Bistrica hydropower plants, both still under construction, would be used exclusively for export to bring in more revenue, while work would go on to extend the life of two thermal power plants.
Bodiroga: Ugljevik and 240 million marks
On October 16, Bodiroga used X to link the news of the price increase to the state of the Ugljevik mine and thermal power plant (RiTE Ugljevik). He claims the Republika Srpska government paid 240 million marks (KM) through the company Gas-RES to Rasid Serdarov, or rather to his firm Comsar Energy RS. In 2013 that firm received a concession on the Ugljevik Istok 2 deposit, together with a concession to build a third block of the Ugljevik thermal power plant. According to Bodiroga, the third block was never built, and a shortage of coal has put the future operation of RiTE Ugljevik in doubt. These are all his claims, and the attached sources do not independently confirm them.
The opposition politician said:
We could have foreseen all of this, and we knew it would come to this if the same people remained at the head of Republika Srpska.
He finished with a line about voters: “We knew it would be like this and we voted for it again.” The statement came after the October 4 election.
Crnadak: the Sume Srpske loan and a “message from the people”
Crnadak spoke out on October 17, also on X. He tied the price increase to a loan that, as he claims, the director of the forestry company Sume Srpske is taking out: 55 million KM at 8.8 percent interest. His post does not name the director and mentions only the surname Kaurin. None of the attached sources independently confirms the loan, so it remains Crnadak’s claim.
Such news, he says, is coming out of the public sector right after the election, and he sees the reason in how voters behave. In his words, the message of the people is: “steal freely, as long as salaries and pensions are paid on time and there are 200 to 300 marks before the elections.” His conclusion was:
Petrovic and Kaurin are only the first to act in line with that message, and the others will soon follow.
Crnadak added that the opposition should no longer deal with these topics, because, as he puts it, people will change their opinion only when the judiciary starts working:
Obviously there is no point, because people will change their opinion only when, one day, the judiciary starts working and frees itself of RTRS, and when they see special forces storming lavish villas, apartments and estates built with plundered money and see with their own eyes what was going on.
What is still not known
ERS has not filed its request, so there is no regulator’s decision either. The 50 percent figure is for now only a claim by the portal Capital, and the Republika Srpska government, whose consent is a precondition, is not ready for higher household bills according to the same report. The Oslobodjenje article does not say that the utility or the government commented on these claims. The January 1 start date depends on a decision by RERS.
