Over the past year, the debts of Russian consumers in front of Gazprom for the supplied gas increased by 2.3 percent, up to 178.4 billion rubles. This is stated in the draft company report of the State Council of the State Council on the topic of gasification. Statistics with reference to the document lead “Vedomosti”.
In the debt structure, almost half, 80.2 billion, falls on the population. The heat supply organizations owed 55.9 billion rubles, and the remaining industrial enterprises – 26.2 billion.
Most of the debt is associated with the consumers of the North Caucasus – 99.2 billion rubles. At the end of the year, their arrears increased by 6.7 billion rubles. Thus, the all-Russian debt grew precisely at the expense of this region, everyone else in the aggregate began to pay more responsibly.
Also, the North Caucasus remains a leader in gas loss. The report notes that the reason is the ripples in the gas pipelines for the embezzlement, disruption of the operation of accounting devices and the use of non-certified gas equipment.
This is not the first complaint of Gazprom to the North Caucasus. In February, the media reported that the head of Gazprom Alexei Miller asked the government to abandon the sale of gas and gas distribution in Dagestan, as the work is loss there. In his opinion, the special regional distribution operator should be created to buy gas in bulk.
At the same time, in December 2020, Miller and the head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov signed an agreement according to which, over the next five years, Gazprom will build 1.3 thousand kilometers of gas pipelines in Chechnya and will bring the gasification of the region to 100 percent. The cost of work will be 12.3 billion rubles. This is comparable to the amount of the debts of the region, which, as of the end of last year, reached 13 billion.
How the region is going to solve debt problems, is unknown. In January 2019, the Minister for the National Policy of Chechnya, Jambulat Umarov, said that Gazprom should forgive debts, because the company has much money and nothing terrible will not happen.