Zero euros on the EPCG and CEDIS account

SOURCE: VICTORY / M.J.
On Thursday, the board of directors of Elektroprivreda adopted the company's negative balance for the next year. EPCG and CEDIS, namely, have zero on the account this year.
And that in a year in which the president of that same board of directors, Milutin Đukanović, announced tens of millions of euros in profit. Two days ago, Milutin Đukanović, in an interview with the newspaper Elektroprivreda, stated that the company's profit will be between 70 and 80 million euros in the record year for EPCG ever. In the official report on operations for the third quarter of this year, EPCG stated a profit of 62.9 million euros.
In general, it has come to the point that taxes and contributions for earnings in EPCG, CEDIS, EPCG Ironworks and EPCG Solar have not been paid for the December earnings.
The million-euro question is how the backbone of the Montenegrin economy came to this state. How did it happen that the company, whose value is estimated at 2.2 billion euros, or 40 percent of the estimated GDP, ends up at zero in a year of record production, record stock prices of electricity, record exports both in terms of price and quantity, because it was shut down CAP?
Party cadres
And that question is easy to answer, because for three years experts, politicians and the media have been warning the team from EPCG, which is headed by Milutin Đukanović (Nova), and where until recently the main manager was Nikola Rovčanin (Democrats) and he withdrew in time to safety parliamentary immunity, that their view of managing the energy sector is dangerous for this country. The former director of Rudnik Uglja Milan Lekić (New Serbian Democracy) took refuge in the safety of immunity, while Dušan Janjušević (Democrats) resigned.
EPCG has spent tens of millions on the new Solari 5000 plus project, because it is financing it from its own funds. The management team of EPCG never announced to the public that the international tender for participation in that project failed, because no investor, neither foreign nor domestic, applied. And they didn't sign up after seeing the results of the Solari 3000+ project! Then EPCG bought the equipment from its own funds.
Millions were spent on the relocation of Ćehotina and the ecological reconstruction of the thermal power plant, which was done without a business plan. Without a business plan, 20 million euros were spent on the purchase of Željezara property, whose 200 workers do nothing, and Milutin Đukanović pays them from the EPCG account as security workers. Only the leading people are being replaced. First, the president of the board, Marko Perunović, was dismissed, who was discovered in the middle of this year to have gambled with EPCG money in the spring, paying 19,000 euros with an official card. He later claimed that he got confused, but that he returned the money from his personal account. Then the director of the Ironworks, Đorđejije Manojlović, whose plan was to produce aluminum locks, was dismissed. Not long after, the new president of the board, Maksim Vučinić, also resigned.
Wages and losses
The salaries of employees in Solar Construction are also paid from the EPCG account, and EPCG increases its share in the company in which it is 100 percent owner anyway. And if someone thinks that this is not a big expense, you should consider that this business group has increased the number of employees by a third in the last three years!
According to the consolidated financial statement, the total cost of earnings, fees and personal expenses at the EPCG group level increased by 14 million to 80.9 million euros. And without EPCG - Željezara.
In addition, EPCG finances losses to CEDIS for the purchase of electricity, which the company should use to cover technical losses. The board of directors decided this year to give CEDIS 21.6 million euros for that purpose, and EPCG, you guessed it, will increase its participation in its daughter company. The money is intended for "financial consolidation due to disturbances in the electricity market". And that, in layman's terms, means that CEDIS cannot cope with the huge difference between the prices of the electricity it imports and the price that is regulatoryly allowed for that purpose. All the more so, since they withdrew the request for an increase in the regulated price of electricity for last year. This year, they did not hesitate to accept a five percent increase in that part of the electricity bill for households.
At the same time, according to EPCG data, losses on the distribution network during 2022 increased by 38.3 gigawatt hours, or ten percent, to a total of 390.2 GWh.
In 2022, EPCG invested the most in the management of the company, EUR 20.7 million! In addition, they were generous in corporate philanthropy, so they set aside 20,000 euros for the SOC, 100,000 euros for health, 12,000 for schools, 5,000 for NGOs, 350,000 for sports and 50,000 for culture.
We should not forget the three crashed cars - the former financial director and now EPCG director's advisor, Miro Vračar, destroyed an "Audi 5" worth 54,000 Head of the Functional Unit - Supply, Jovan Kasalica, "Opela Insignia" and Željko Pekić Electric "Golf".
Higher production was "swallowed" by the drop in stock prices
For the first three quarters, HPP Perućica produced 69.5 percent more electricity than in 2022, and Piva 36.9 percent. Despite these results, the hydroelectric power plant and thermal power plant had a 7.2 percent increase in production. This increase in production, with reduced consumption, because KAP and Željezara are not working, was an attempt to cover bad business decisions with increased exports. However, the electricity market is stabilizing this year, so prices on the HUPX exchange are on average twice as low as in 2022.
EPCG, after the third quarter of this year, reported that it earned 352.3 million euros from the sale of electricity, or 11.6 million more than in the nine months of 2022. Total revenues amounted to 387.7 million, which is 45.7 million more .
Business expenses, as they stated, decreased by 109 million to 300.6 million euros, while salary expenses increased by 6.2 million to 25.3 million euros, which means that salary expenses increased by 30 percent.
They pay 35 euros for a ton of coal
It happened that the Coal Mine ran into business difficulties, which was partly caused by record employment, and partly by a bad contract with Elektroprivreda Srbije, which terminated it. That contract is now being handled by a special prosecutor.
Basically, EPCG set out to save that subsidiary company as well. All the more before it did not find an alternative market for 2024, when the thermal power plant will be out of operation for eight months, due to ecological reconstruction. And it is saved by the fact that TE Pljevlja pays it 35 euros per ton of coal, which is 11 euros more than last year.