Electricity to go up on April 1

José Manuel Soria,
Minister Industry, Energy and Tourism

SPAIN (Agencies) Spain's April Fool is in December, so this is not a joke. The Minister for Industry, Energy and Tourism, José Manuel Soria, announced on Thursday that our electricity bills will be going up on April 1 to meet recent decrees from the Supreme Court. The decrees revert to the last two price 'freezes' and oblige the suppliers to re-bill almost 29 million consumers from October last year in order to obtain real costs and thus avoid what is called a 'tariff deficit'. The Minister did not have an exact percentage or tariff scale for the price rise he announced. He did say, however, that anyone thinking that the costs of carrying out the Supreme Court's decrees would 'fall on the backs of consumers, would be very mistaken'. The Government, he said, is preparing 'several measures' to cut the costs of the system and therefore to 'smooth' the price increases.