Minister Vows Comprehensive Audit of Bulgaria’s Energy Sector

Bulgaria's Energy Minister Temenuzhka Petkova has vowed a comprehensive audit of the sector to establish the financial gap and identify ways of overcoming it.

During a Wednesday sitting of the Branch Council for Tripartite Cooperation, she declared that urgent reforms aimed at coping with the imbalance in the system would be applied as soon as the current situation of the energy sector was clear.

The participants in the meeting, including representatives of state-owned and private energy companies, discussed the necessity of injecting fresh funds into the energy system, as well as options for solving the problem with the indebtedness of companies in the sector, according to the press office of the Energy Ministry.

The participants in Wednesday's meeting proposed measures aimed at normalizing the work process at the Maritsa Iztok mines and the Cherno More-Burgas mine by guaranteeing the regular payment of salaries at the coal mining companies.

Some 18 months ago, Bulgaria's caretaker government of Prime Minister Marin Raykov, the World Bank, and the European Commission prepared an analysis of the local energy sector and proposed steps to stabilize it, according to reports of dnevnik.bg.

In June 2014, Bulgaria's State Commission for Energy and Water Regulation (DKEVR) announced that the debts of the National Electric Company (NEK), accumulated since 2010, had reached BGN 2.9 M,

The caretaker government of Georgi Bliznashki created an Energy Board in a bid to solve the problems of the sector.