Electricity rate for residential customers will rise 30 percent beginning on May 1, 2023 – from 0.077 som (equivalent to US$0.0089) to 1.00 som (equivalent to US$0.012).
“If we don’t do that, we risk losing our energy industry forever. Because expenses on payment of energy employees’ salaries, replaces of obsolete transformers and power transmission lines are added to the cost of the generated electric power, and a s a result, the cost for one kWh of electricity increases to 2.38 soms,” Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov wrote on his Facebook page.
According to him, not a single hydroelectric power plant has been built during the years of independence and high power transformers and high voltage lines have not been updated. “Wear of electrical equipment has been more than 80 percent,” said Japarov. “Meanwhile, the population has increased by half and the country’s annual requirements in electricity have increased from 9 billion kWh in 1991 to about 16 billion kWh.”
“Meanwhile, the debt of the country’s energy sector amounts to 137 billion soms (equivalent to 1.6 billion U.S. dollars). Roughly speaking, the domestic energy industry has become half-alive,” Kyrgyz president stressed.
