From December 1, housing and communal services tariffs will rise sharply: how much you have to pay

Experts told what amounts Russians will see in future payments

The government has postponed the indexation of tariffs for gas, electricity, water and heat supply from July 1, 2023 to December 1, 2022. Officials explain the unscheduled increase by “the need to ensure uninterrupted operation and infrastructure development.” The indexation level will not exceed 9%. At the same time, regional authorities are allowed to change tariffs at their discretion: local increases may be higher than the average value adopted at the federal level. How to pay for housing and communal services, if there is hardly enough money for food and medicine? Will resource workers cut off non-payers from light and heat? How to appeal billed invoices? This was told by experts at the Round Table in MK.

From December 1, Russia will raise tariffs for housing and communal services for the second time in a year: heat supply, electricity, cold and hot water. The next increase will take place as part of the plan – in July 2024. However, experts do not rule out that resources may rise in price not in a year and a half, but much earlier. The depreciation of the communal infrastructure is so high that resource-supplying organizations will not be able to modernize it without additional funds. At the same time, the population’s debt for housing and communal services continues to grow, and many families are at risk of falling into debt.

Given the economic situation in which Russia found itself, the authorities had no other choice but to go for an unscheduled indexation of tariffs right now, he said during a conference at the MK press center expert of the Popular Front, member of the Public Council of the federal project “School of a Literate Consumer” Pavel Sklyanchuk.

“Today, no one can say what the tariffs will be in a year, two or three. Of course, such uncertainty unnerves both consumers and industry participants, he continued. – We will wait until the end of December, when the first receipts arrive. Having received payments, people will be able to compare them with the November ones and understand how much the payment has actually increased. In turn, we ourselves will monitor and find out whether the tariffs were indeed indexed by 9% or by a double-digit number.”

Meanwhile, according to director of the direction “Urban economy” of the fund “Institute of Urban Economics” Irina Gentslerresource organizations are in dire need of an influx of funding. “Now there is a situation of huge underfunding in the industry, especially for water supply and sanitation enterprises. Many enterprises are on the verge of bankruptcy,” she noted. – The tariffs that we pay today do not economically correspond to the costs incurred by enterprises. This indexing is called “accelerated” for a reason. It was still listed in the plans, only it was supposed to take place in July 2023. But the situation is serious and companies need funds now to ensure that our population is reliably supplied with all the necessary services.”

Unscheduled indexation is a very dangerous precedent that breaks faith in the state, said Chairman of the Housing Union, Member of the Housing and Communal Services Committee of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation, lawyer Konstantin Krokhin. “In recent years, everyone was sure that, in accordance with the law, it is impossible to raise tariffs for utilities more than once a year. It is the law that sets the upper limits: the growth of tariffs should not exceed the rate of inflation. As a result, today we have lost the landmarks of stability, as these rules have been violated. Although de jure the government has the right to make changes to the plan, and uses this right,” the expert said.

Meanwhile, the government explains the change in the timing of indexation by the “need to ensure uninterrupted operation and infrastructure development” of the housing and communal services. In addition, the Ministry of Economic Development promised that indexation would not be carried out in 2023. According to Konstantin Krokhin, the reasons why the authorities decided to raise tariffs were vague.

“I have big doubts that part of this money will go to infrastructure development. In this case, we are talking about supporting enterprises in the resource supply industry. It was they who lobbied for this indexing. It turns out that the industry will be supported at the expense of consumers and from the pocket of residents,” he summed up.