reform of "Astrkommunenergo"

Yesterday, the MUP "Astrkommunenergo" announced the start of restructuring of the utility company. By April 1, another municipal unitary enterprise, Gorenergosbyt, will be created, to which the Astrokommunenergo network will be transferred, and the parent organization will perform sales functions. According to city authorities, this will allow Astrkommunenergo to pay off its debts and bring Gorenergosbyt to FOREM. According to Kommersant, by dividing the property, the mayor's office is simply trying to protect municipal power grids from being absorbed by Astrakhanenergo. In the Astrakhan subsidiaries of RAO UES of Russia, to which Astrakommunenergo owes a total of about 700 million rubles, projects for the reorganization of Astrakommunenergo are called “nonsense.” Yesterday, the MUP “Astrkommunenergo” announced that, together with the city authorities, a decision had been made to reform the enterprise. According to the project, on April 1, a new municipal unitary enterprise, Gorenergosbyt, will appear in Astrakhan, which will begin to perform the functions of a network company, while Astrkommunenergo will retain sales functions. This is being done, as the press service of the Astrakhan City Hall explained to Kommersant, as part of the implementation of Art. 6 of the federal law “On the peculiarities of the functioning of the electric power industry in the transition period,” which prohibits, from April 1, 2006, “the combination of activities for the transmission of electrical energy and operational dispatch control in the electric power industry with the activity of purchasing and selling electricity.” Thus, almost all of Astrkommunenergo’s property, that is, electrical networks, will be transferred to the newly formed municipal unitary enterprise.
According to the general director of Astrkommunenergo Sergei Gubin, in fact, the main function of his enterprise will be payments on debts accumulated by municipal unitary enterprises in recent years. “I have a writ of execution on my table for 53 million rubles for last year from the Astrakhan Energy Sales Company, and with this they are digging a hole for themselves, because because of it, current payments are again being disrupted,” Mr. Gubin complained. According to him, the MUP will be able to pay off its debts only by collecting money from creditors. For example, from the regional administration, which owes utilities about 25 million rubles. To solve the problem, in 2007, according to the general director of Astr-kommunenergo, the grid company is planned to be brought to FOREM - by this time the issue of equipping Gorenergosbyt with an automatic electricity metering system should be resolved.
The MUP refused to talk about what role the Moscow company Gazenergo, with which the mayor’s office had recently announced about cooperation, should play in the reform process.
Meanwhile, unofficially, the city committee of economics and investment explained to Kommersant that, in fact, by restructuring the assets of Astra-Kommunenergo, the mayor's office is simply trying to rid the city's utility electric networks of the prospect of being given away for the debts of Astrakhanenergo or the Astrakhan Sales Company.
However, according to power engineers, the municipality will not be able to secure the networks by cutting up Astrkommunenergo’s property, since the MUP has a total debt of about 700 million rubles, and the MUP is not capable of paying off with anything other than the property itself. “And the plans to enter FOREM that they are making public are simply the delusions of a madman,” Oleg Statsenko, general director of the Astrakhan Energy Sales Company, told Kommersant. According to him, neither one nor the other municipal unitary enterprise will ever be able to do this, since with such an unstable client as the population, they simply will not be able to predict the size of the advance payments that need to be made for the electricity consumed in the coming month. Accordingly, he will suffer losses “and at one point simply lose the right to work in the market.” Moreover, Mr. Statsenko clarified, the municipal unitary enterprise, having accumulated multimillion-dollar debts, has already shown that it is not able to pay on time.
The press service of the council of the municipal formation "City of Astrakhan" told Kommersant that the draft decision "On the reorganization of the municipal unitary enterprise Astrakommunenergo" will be considered at a meeting of the commission on rule-making, law and order of the City Council on March 6.
IGOR SIRIN, Astrakhan

Kommersant (Volgograd) No. 38 from 04.03.2006

City Hall protects property