On Thursday, 20 March, the Saeima adopted in the final reading the amendments to the Electricity Market Law according to which households will be able to purchase electricity in a free market as of 1 January 2015 instead of 1 April 2014 as previously planned.

Jānis Ozoliņš, Chairman of the Economic, Agricultural, Environmental and Regional Policy Committee of the Saeima, which was responsible for processing the proposed amendments, previously explained that the amendments envisage maintaining the regulated electricity prices until the end of the year, thus allowing households to continue paying for electricity as they did so far.
The authors of the amendments pointed out that these changes are necessary in order to allow time for raising public awareness about the new system and preparing an appropriate social support mechanism for low-income households.

Ozoliņš noted that the amendments will not change the mechanism for compensating the mandatory procurement component, which was introduced in order to avoid raising electricity costs for consumers resulting from introduction of the mandatory procurement component. An electricity user fund has been operating since January 2014; it is financed by the subsidised electricity tax applied to electricity producers that was introduced for a three-year period. The fund is used to compensate for the increase in the mandatory procurement component.

When adopting the state budget for 2014 last autumn, the Saeima supported amendments that envisaged opening the Latvian electricity market. The electricity market liberalisation began back in 2007, when it was applied to enterprises.



Saeima Press Service