MP Duško Marković, appearing on the programme “NAČISTO” on TV Vijesti, told the blatant lie that CEDIS had been brought into deficit through unlawful and excessive hiring. He also gave a false figure, claiming that over 300 people had been hired at CEDIS in just two months.
To ensure that the public is accurately informed and to expose the lies unbecoming of an MP and a man who has held high public office, we state that CEDIS’s business performance indicators for the first 8 months of 2021 show that the company incurred a loss of EUR 2,350,000.00, exclusively for the following two reasons:
- Discounts approved by EPCG for consumers (members of the Gold Team and so-called vulnerable customers, pensioners with the lowest incomes and unemployed persons registered with the Employment Agency), which EPCG then reimbursed by CEDIS in the amount of EUR 1,490,000.00.
- Significantly increased costs of procuring electricity in the period from January to August 2021.
CEDIS is suffering major financial losses due to the irresponsible and extremely malicious decision of the previous management not to procure electricity last year to cover losses in the distribution system for 2021.
Pursuant to Article 115, paragraph 5 of the Energy Law, CEDIS is required to procure electricity in an open and transparent manner. Until now, the full quantities of energy required to cover losses have been procured at least a year in advance, whereas the previous management decided, for the first time, not to procure that energy in time, thereby knowingly exposing the company to the considerable risk of having to procure energy on a monthly basis.
The malicious intent behind the previous management’s decision, and its aim of harming the company they managed, is also evident from the fact that exchange prices were exceptionally low during the previous year due to the coronavirus pandemic and the slowdown in economic activity, ranging from EUR 45/MWh to a maximum of EUR 55/MWh.
The fact that prices were also favourable at the beginning of the year, and that information was emerging about the discovery of a vaccine and the start of the economic recovery, was not enough to persuade the previous management—which probably suspected that it would no longer be in those positions—to buy electricity for all of 2021, or, as good stewards of the resources entrusted to them by citizens, to consider purchasing energy for 2022 as well.
The new management took over CEDIS at a time when exchange prices were significantly higher than the price approved by the Energy Regulatory Agency, and was therefore forced to procure energy under monthly contracts linked to the exchange price. The current price of electricity on the exchange is at an all-time high and is above EUR 200/MWh. It is estimated that, solely as a result of this misguided decision by the former management, CEDIS will lose over EUR 7,000,000.00 by the end of the year.
MP Marković knows that these are the reasons for the stated loss, because they are known to his adviser, who is also a member of his Government and who coordinated CEDIS on behalf of the party. The sole reason MP Marković mentioned CEDIS on last night’s programme on TV Vijesti is that his personal interests are under threat. It is obvious that the former Prime Minister and the woman who persuaded him to mention CEDIS on last night’s programme miss the behind-closed-doors agreements on which private companies would be awarded the largest investment projects at CEDIS, such as the revitalisation project. The former Prime Minister is well aware that the employees whose numbers he got completely wrong were hired because CEDIS needed its own workforce to complete Phase II of the revitalisation. In this way, an opportunity was given, primarily to young people who had completed secondary vocational education at an electrical engineering school specialising in power engineering, to finally put their skills to the test in their chosen profession and earn an honest living through their own work for themselves and their families. Unlike when Mr Marković was at the head of the Government of Montenegro and his close associate coordinated CEDIS on behalf of the party, no one asked these people about their party affiliation or any other affiliation, but rather about their qualifications and their readiness to carry out the assigned tasks competently. Mr Marković is also troubled by the fact that there are no longer any lists inside CEDIS marked with pluses and minuses according to affiliation with the party to which Mr Marković still belongs, while he faces the serious dilemma of whether to remain in it or leave it, and thus finally achieve something politically. Through his appearance last night, the politically half-accomplished Mr Marković once again confirmed that he is a weak politician with a leader from whom he will never manage to break free. It would have been more moral and more beneficial to society had Mr Marković disclosed last night what he knew from his time in charge of state security—who ordered the murder of Duško Jovanović and the other politically motivated murders in Montenegro—instead of spreading lies about one of the largest state-owned companies, which carries out a regulated activity, rather than, as he ignorantly claims, being a monopolistic company.
