Zubarevich: Chechnya unable to pay electricity and gas debts

Chechnya has asked the Kremlin to write off its 16.23-billion rouble debt for electricity and gas, which accrued for the period from 1999 to 2009, when the republic was under the counterterrorist operation (CTO) regime. There is no response from Moscow yet. Natalia Zubarevich, an Associate Professor at the Supreme School of Economics, believes that the absence of republic's budgetary income growth is the reason for the above request.

Earlier, the "Caucasian Knot" has reported that in Chechnya employees of utility services are touring households demanding that local residents pay their power debts and disconnecting them from the grid, if they fail or refuse to do it.

Chechnya has huge debts for electricity; here, both businesses and the population are poor payers; while the revenues of the own republic's budget almost do not grow without transfers from the federal centre; therefore there is nothing to pay the debts, Ms Zubarevich has noted. According to her story, other North-Caucasian republics have similar serious debts.

She adds that transfers to Chechnya from the Russian budget are going down: while in 2011, they made 68 billion roubles; in 2012 – 67 billion roubles; in 2013 – 53 billion roubles; and in 2014 – 57 billion roubles.

The fact that Chechnya is asking the federal government to write off its debt of 16.23 billion roubles for electricity and gas, accumulated in the period from 1999 to 2009, was announced by Rizvan Magomedov, Deputy Minister of Industry and Energy of the Chechen Republic.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.