Having faced with an illegal and unjustified increase in the cost of the supplied thermal energy, the CEO of a commercial organization from Balashikha city district turned for help to the municipal public reception of the Business Ombudsman and directly to the Commissioner for the Protection of the Rights of Entrepreneurs in the Moscow Region, Vladimir Golovnev.

 In February of this year, the businessman received a notification of a unilateral change in the tariff value by 1.5 times, which contradicts the requirements of the order of the Committee on Prices and Tariffs of the Moscow Region No. 298-R dated 12/20/2021, on the basis of which the cost of services under the heat supply contract is determined.

"We believe that the tariff for thermal energy, imputed to consumers by the resource-supplying organization, is set illegally. According to the law on heat supply, the tariff should be set by agreement of the parties, and not unilaterally by a monopolist organization," the entrepreneur said in his appeal.

The Commissioner sent a letter to the head of the Committee on prices and tariffs of the Moscow Region containing the relevant arguments and a request to verify the legality of the actions of the heat supply organization.

According to the results of the audit, the relevant violations of the requirements of the legislation were identified and eliminated. A warning has been sent to the heat energy supplier.

"Regional business is going through difficult times. We receive quite a lot of requests from entrepreneurs concerning interaction with resource-supplying organizations. In particular, enterprises are asked to make changes to the Basic provisions of the functioning of retail electric energy markets, in terms of the procedure for paying for electric energy to a guaranteeing supplier. Namely, to suspend the conditions for making advance payments in the amount of 30 and 40 percent of the cost of electricity, replacing them with a method of paying for the actual use of the corresponding capacities," commented Vladimir Golovnev.

"These are not the times when you need to think about super profits. We must meet each other halfway, find compromise options in order to keep existing enterprises in working order, save jobs, preventing a large-scale increase in unemployment. When considering this appeal, we were guided by these principles and achieved what we wanted – the entrepreneur kept the previous tariffs and did not incur additional expenses to keep the enterprise afloat," Vladimir Golovnev summed up.