PSRC head: AMD 65bn underinvested in improving quality of electricity supply in Armenia

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YEREVAN, 20 September. /ARKA/. Armenia's national power distribution company Electric Networks of Armenia (ENA) planned to invest AMD 233 billion in improving electricity supply in 2016-2023, but invested AMD 229.9 billion in total Garegin Baghramyan, head of the Public Services Regulatory Commission (PSRC), said at a parliamentary hearing on electricity supply problems today./pp

According to him, the investments were distributed not as originally planned. In particular, 133.7 billion drams should have been allocated to improve the quality of services, but in fact 68.7 billion drams were invested for these purposes, which is almost two times (or 65 billion drams) less than planned.nbsp;nbsp;/pp

At the same time, considerably more funds were invested in connection of new subscribers to the power grid: 66.6 billion drams instead of the planned 28 billion drams. One of the ways out of this situation, according to the head of PSRC, is to increase the cost of connection, as a result of which the expenses for this process are fully on the shoulders of citizens and entrepreneurs./pp

Besides, 15.5 billion drams more than planned were spent on the commercial electricity metering system.nbsp;nbsp;/pp

Baghramyan noted that even with the current level of investments the level of losses was reduced from 7.5 per cent to 6.5 per cent./pp

During the discussion, Baghramyan was asked several times whether the efficiency of the company's investments is monitored. In response, he said that an external auditor from the 10 largest companies is invited to monitor this process./pp

The PSRC head said that the company's ability to invest additional funds is limited, as either it will affect prices for subscribers or the company will have to find other ways to compensate for the costs./pp

Earlier, ENA CEO Karen Harutyunyan said that more than AMD 243.9 billion have already been invested in the development of distribution networks and infrastructure modernisation from 2016 to August 2024, and more than AMD 296 billion more is envisaged until 2034./pp

Among the main directions of the investment programme are connection of new consumers and development of distribution networks (planned investments until 2034 - over AMD 103 billion), reduction of the frequency and duration of power outages (over AMD 48.1 billion), reduction of voltage fluctuations (over AMD 70.8 billion) and improvement of the commercial electricity metering system (over AMD 40.87 billion). -0-nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;/pp/pp nbsp;/p