Government: Discounts on gas excise duties for bulk consumers planned
The government may introduce discounts on gas excise duties for bulk consumers. The measure would serve to counteract a price shock due to the planned excise hike.
The government agreed in its cabinet meeting on Thursday to plan the step more thoroughly during the budget strategy discussions in the coming spring.
“One option the government has also discussed and which we definitely want to analyze is a discount for bulk consumers,” Minister of Finance Sven Sester (IRL) told ERR on Friday. “We’ll discuss this, and in spring we’ll see what our options are, but we decided that we definitely want to go ahead with it,” he added.
According to Sester, the measure is mainly connected with raising the excise duty on gas. At the same time, he didn’t exclude discounts also on the electricity and renewable energy excise duties.
Different industry representatives turned to the government earlier this week to warn about the planned excise hike on natural gas, which they see as unacceptable. With the planned increase, the industry would lose its competitive edge coming from low energy prices in the Estonian market, they wrote.
According to the coalition agreement of the government parties, excise duties on gas are to increase by 25% every year from 2018 to 2020. The current plan has them increase by 20% a year until then.
Editor: Editor: Dario Cavegn