Translated material
Let's take debts in kind
In the Omsk region, the military settles accounts with power engineers with their property
Such an unprecedented agreement was reached during negotiations between the general director of the Omskenergo company, Alexander Antropenko, and the head of the Omsk garrison, Major General Andrei Shvaichenko.Now the Ministry of Defense owes Omskenergo JSC more than 33 million rubles. Recently, debts have been constantly growing, but none of the defense facilities located in the Omsk region is now without power. In 1999, conflicts between energy workers and the military reached the point where the latter set up guards and forcibly prevented power outages.
According to the company's press service, the Omsk energy sector is now in critical condition. Reliability of its operation can only be ensured by large financial investments. Omskenergo's losses in the first quarter of this year reached 350 million rubles. To carry out work to prepare for the heating season, we had to take out a loan of 300 million rubles. At the same time, consumer debts are already approaching 1.5 billion rubles.
The general director of the Omskenergo company, Alexander Antropenko, is confident that it will be very difficult for the army team to pay them off, since such budget items are financed on a residual basis. Therefore, energy workers are now negotiating with the Ministry of Finance to “close” the debts of the military. Time will tell whether this will work out, but it is clear that any agreement is better than confrontation.
General Shvaichenko, in turn, claims that the command of the Omsk garrison will take all measures to carry out monthly payments for the current consumption of heat and electricity. By the end of the year, the military intends to completely liquidate current debt obligations. True, solving the problem of debt for past years (which amounts to more than 20 million rubles) is much more difficult. These amounts are not included in the current year’s budget at all, so the Omsk military agreed with the proposal of the power engineers and is ready to pay off debts by transferring its heating networks, substations and other facilities into the ownership of Omskenergo (the idea, by the way, was suggested by the power engineers). Now, to complete the transaction, the military will need permission from the Russian government.