Looking at the adopted households support mechanism’s effectiveness in a situation when prices of energy resources are significantly up, it is likely Latvia will have to set a price cap, said Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš in an interview to TV3 programme 900 seconds on 7 September.
The Ministry of Economics is currently calculating the size of bills residents in different municipalities can expect during the upcoming heating season. This is being done to check if the existing support mechanisms will be enough.
«I suspect we will end up at some kind of price cap scenario,» he said.
The PM points out that heating energy prices in some municipalities range very widely – from EUR 50 to more than EUR 300 per 1 MWh.
According to Kariņš, areas in which heating energy costs exceed 300 EUR/MWh will require additional support.
Before the government can decide on a price cap in Latvia, it is necessary to wait for the proposed Europe-wide solution from the European Commission. The prime minister has discussed it with President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.
It is planned that on 9 September there will be a meeting EU ministers for energy. During this meeting it is planned to discuss measures to respond to the rapid rise of energy resources.
The EC President announced that she supports setting a price cap in Russian gas supplied using pipelines. Lithuanian PM Ingrida Šimonytė also proposed a joint EU-level decision to set a price cap for electricity.
As previously reported, amendments to the Law on Measures to Reduce Extraordinary Increase in Energy Prices have come to force. These amendments provide for a number of measures to help partially cover heating cost increase for households.
The volume of support for different measures will be around EUR 442.25 million.
The government also plans to allocate approximately EUR 200 million as support for enterprises due to increasing energy resource prices.
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