The Montenegrin power utility EPCG ended September this year with a loss of €80 million, Acting Director Bojan Đordan told Vijesti TV. He expects the company’s financial performance to stabilize within the next one to two years.
Đordan explained that EPCG operated with a large, though anticipated, deficit by the end of the third quarter.
“For the first nine months of this year, EPCG recorded a loss of around €80 million. The dominant reason is the outage at the Pljevlja Thermal Power Plant, which left us short by about 550 GWh of electricity. On the market, that represents roughly €45 to €50 million. Unfortunately, this coincided with poor hydrological conditions,” he said.
He expects the financial result to move from negative to positive within one to two years, driven primarily by the completion of the environmental reconstruction of the Pljevlja Thermal Power Plant.
“We expect the work to be completed in line with the contract. According to the contractual deadline, 1 December is the final date for bringing the thermal power plant back online,” Đordan noted.
Despite the poor financial results, he does not expect electricity prices to increase for now, although he acknowledges that market pressures can be unpredictable.
“If EPCG is to operate in a market-based manner, price adjustments will have to be considered at some point. But for now, we are maintaining the current price levels, and I believe this will remain the case for the foreseeable future,” he said.
Đordan also highlighted a concerning trend—Montenegro’s electricity consumption has reached levels higher than during the period when the country had a fully developed industrial sector.
“All other energy sources have become significantly more expensive—whether firewood, pellets, or something else. These two key heating fuels, compared to electricity, have risen sharply over the past four to five years, while the price of electricity has remained unchanged at the level set in 2011,” he added.
