21 December 2006.
MARKET SHARE OF ELECTRICITY DISTRIBUTION COMPANIES IN THE SOUTH EAST EUROPE ENERGY COMMUNITY
Six energy companies – out of 13 of them, are controlling the share of 78% of the retail electricity market in the South East Europe Energy Community, the four of the companies being from European Union – the Czech CEZ, Italian Enel, German E.ON and Austrian EVN.
The following picture represents market share in the South East Europe, according to number of consumers.
In the earlier privatizations of electricity distribution companies in the South East Europe and Balkans regions, one of the indicators for successful privatization was the achieved price expressed per consumer – it amounted to 80 euros per consumer in Ukraine, 100-150 euros per consumer in Romania, 200 euros in Czech Republic, and 230 euros in Bulgaria.
According to the calculation, privatization of electricity distribution companies in SEE Energy Community – which have the total of 21.5 million consumers, will bring the countries in the region about 3.2 billion euros – if we calculate it according to an average value of 150 euros per consumer.
In the last three years about 10.5 million consumers got new “owners”, while the privatization agendas of the rest of electricity distribution companies are not known yet.
Eyes of the energy public will in 2007 be focused on Romania: privatization of the last three Romanian electricity distribution companies has been announced, and then it will be clear who has gained the leading position in electricity distribution in the Energy Community. The fight for the first place will occur among CEZ, Enel and E.ON, unless a completely new “player” wins the Romanian tender.
Besides, privatization of power complexes in Romania has been announced – thermal power plants Rovinari, Turceni and Krajova, which are believed to start a new wave of privatizations throughout the Balkans.
Thermal power plants, which mostly use coal, include 56% of the overall installed production capacities in the Energy Community – and they need huge investments so that they could be adjusted to the strict ecological standards of the European Union.
Since the Energy Community countries mostly don’t have money for financing these projects on their own, privatization is a method that will be used by many member countries.
Up to now, the power plants privatization hasn’t been carried out at the same speed as privatization of electricity distribution companies, because investors showed more interest in obtaining more consumers – in order to compensate the loss of consumers on the domestic markets due to liberalization of the European energy market – than in thermal power plants with obsolete technologies for electricity generation.
Significant production capacities have so far been privatized only in Bulgaria and Montenegro, and they mostly include coal-fired thermal power plants.
CEZ is the unique company on the South East Europe market, because it is a state-owned company that aggressively participates in acquisitions abroad, but also because the company has the highest market value in Eastern Europe.
Those characteristics have turned CEZ into a favorite argument of the power companies in the region – for opposing privatization. Robert Anderson writes for Business Eastern Europe (The Economist Intelligence Unit) that the Management of CEZ with the started acquisitions actually buys time and delays its own privatization until it is determined how profitable they have been and what results they will achieve.
Other, more cynical observers assume that CEZ’s focusing on investments abroad is only the way of hiding “unpleasantly big” quantity of money that has been made as a result of the monopoly position on the domestic market and increase in electricity price from year to year.
During next year, it will be known whether CEZ has succeeded to achieve the determined aim – to become “the number one” in electric power sector of the South East Europe, as well as the first results of the previous investments.
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