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Combined reports
The Chief of the Russian energy monopoly boasted at a national convention of his company directors in Vladivostok this week that the utility company increased production last year and said that he would seek to double electricity prices in Primorye.
During the visit on Tuesday and Wednesday, Anatoly Chubais said the company, Unified Energy Systems of Russia, produced 3.9 percent more electricity in 2000 than in the previous year.
He added that the federal budget paid most of its debts, but local budgets and intermediaries that sell electricity to households still owe some 45.4 billion rubles ($1.5 billion).
Chubais said rates in Primorye should be hiked from the current 56 kopecks (2 cents) per kilowatt hour to 1.05 rubles thereby arming the region's electricity provider with sufficient finances to pass through the next winter. Initially though the rate will go up to only 92 kopecks, a move apparently planned for the second quarter.
Director of the local energy provider received five sheets of instructions laying out how to avoid last winter's disastrous interruptions in heat and electricity supplies later on this year.
"Your region is a symbol of a total collapse of the energy sector," Chubais said in an interview. "The purpose of our coming is simple: your region should become a symbol of the impeccable work of the Russian energy sector."
He said that collection of payments for electricity will be tightened further. Several national television stations were to go off the air in Primorye Thursday because a state-owned local transmitter was switched off because of its debts. Had the power company implemented its plan, Thursday's power cuts would have also affected Vladivostok's trams and trolley buses allowing them only to run before 10 a.m. and after 4 p.m.
"Our position in Primorye will be of the utmost clarity," Chubais said. "You either pay and have heat and electricity or you don't pay and do without lights and television. We'll pull the plug immediately regardless of who the debtor is: the FSB [the Federal Security Service], the army, a household or a TV center."
Vladivostok Mayor Yury Kopylov said the jacking up of rates would be ravaging for the city. "I'm afraid that people will be leaving Vladivostok and the region. A single solution is to ask for extra subsidies from the government."
While calling for the hikes, the 300 managers of the national monopoly and its regional subsidiaries displayed opulence. They rented some of the most expensive hotel rooms and hired a cruise liner for a pleasure voyage along Primorye's picturesque coast.
-- From the Vladivostok and Novosti
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