Lithuanian industrialists criticise government’s energy strategy

Lithuania’s industrialists criticised the new state energy strategy for a lack of investment attraction measures that would improve Lithuania‘s competitiveness and economic development.

Minister of Energy Rokas Masiulis agreed that the burden on the industry in Lithuania compared to other EU countries is much higher and that this does reduce the country’s competitiveness.

“We always emphasize that industrialists are not interested in specific prices, but so that the electricity price for the industry would be competitive compared to prices in the region. If the priority is to provide cheap energy for our population, then do not expect Lithuanian economic development. We know that other countries are ahead of us: Swedes are lowering the cost of electricity for a reason – they want to increase their competitiveness. If we have higher electricity prices in the industry than our neighbours do, then both industrial development and attracting investment becomes difficult,” said the President of the Lithuanian Confederation of Industrialists Robertas Dargis.

“Our prices for the industry are better than prices in Latvia, but worse than in Estonia and a little bit worse than in Poland,” said Masiulis.

“What the National Energy Strategy is missing are the premises of its system and evaluations on how energy consumption will change over the next 10-20 years. Also, we cannot consider Lithuania as an enclosed island when we are integrated into the European Union and our integration is only growing. Lithuanian strategy needs to be discussed with the Baltic and Scandinavian strategies on the table because these are parts of the Lithuanian energy strategy. Only then can we see a scenario that would match our energy development,” said Dargis.

Alfa.lt