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The bill will help address financial issues that arose at the state-run nuclear power operator Energoatom.
The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, has passed Bill No. 2386 on the settlement of accounts payable and receivable on the wholesale electricity market, as well as on terminating operations of the wholesale electricity supplier.
At first reading, the draft was backed by 258 MPs with at least 226 votes required, an UNIAN correspondent reported on April 30.
Rapporteur for the bill, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Energy, Housing and Utilities Andriy Gerus, said that that the legislation introduces the following tools of debt repayment: mutual settlement; debt repayment (write-off); and assignment of claim or replacement of a party to the obligation.
According to Gerus, the bill will help address financial issues that arose at the state-run enterprise Energoatom, operator of the country's nuclear power plants. The company will be able to receive UAH 11 billion (US$408 million) in the form of government domestic loan bonds.
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The explanatory note says that, as of August 31, 2019, the receivables of the operator of Ukraine's wholesale electricity market Energorynok amounted to UAH 30.9 billion (US$1.1 billion), of which the debt that arose after the introduction of Ukraine's electricity retail market in the first half of 2019 was UAH 2.4 billion (US$89 million). Energorynok's payables stood at UAH 28.1 billion (US$1 billion).
The main causes of arrears are the following: lack of full coverage of coal cost to coal-mining enterprises from the national budget; low payment discipline at water supply and sewerage enterprises; and poor payment discipline of electricity consumers in the Russian-occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine.
As UNIAN reported earlier, at an April 22 Cabinet meeting, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said that the energy sector was facing a crisis, and instructed that the government together with lawmakers from the profile committee of the Verkhovna Rada develop an action plan for each branch of the industry.
In early April, the state-run enterprise Energoatom, the operator of Ukrainian-based nuclear power plants, declared a critical situation on the energy market caused by the debt estimated at UAH 5 billion (US$185.5 million) of the state-owned company Guaranteed Buyer for electricity supplied by Energoatom