The attitude of Gazprom towards Moldovagaz, which it controls, is unreasonable and unfriendly - Andrei Spinu.
The Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Infrastructure and Regional Development stated this while answering questions from MPs on Thursday. He explained that this is not about the current debt of Moldovagaz, since the company fully paid for the gas consumed in December and paid for its supplies for the first 10 days. “We do not have a problem of debt, non-payments, but there is a problem of a cash deficit, a lack of working capital, and now no actions, including raising the tariff from January 1, would help Moldovagaz make a 50% advance payment for gas until January 20 against the backdrop of a sharp increase in its purchase price, which is not covered by the tariff. If the Moldovan authorities approved a new gas tariff at the beginning of January, then consumers would have paid for the gas consumed in January only starting from February. We had discussions. Back on January 5, I wrote to Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Board of Gazprom, with a request to support Moldovagaz during this period. The government and Moldovagaz asked to postpone the full payment of 50% of the advance payments for the gas consumed in January until the end of January, they asked to slightly extend this period. Yesterday Moldovagaz paid $7 million to Gazprom, today it plans to pay $8.5 million. If we had just a few more days, a week, we wouldn’t have had such a problem at all,” Andrei Spinu said. He noted that the provisions of the contract with Gazprom remained the same, and earlier there were negative financial deviations. But there was no such attitude towards Moldovagaz. “I spoke with Miller, this problem was discussed at the meeting of the Moldovagaz Supervisory Board, but no one spoke about the possibility of cutting off gas supplies or sending a letter warning about a possible cessation of gas supplies. We received such a letter from Gazprom unexpectedly, without warning. We regret that the majority shareholder of Moldovagaz decided to act in this way and changed the approach to our country. Since 2011, the company has always accepted negative financial deviations, which were allowed before the tariff revision. Only since that time, negative financial deviations totaling more than $400 million have been accumulated, and there were no such letters, the attitude towards us has clearly changed,” the Deputy Prime Minister said. //20.01.2022 - InfoMarket.
