Energy supplier E.ON Romania last year paid about 371 million euros to the state and local budgets, 80 percent more than in 2021, and supported thousands of jobs, E.ON Romania CEO Volker Raffel announced on Wednesday on Facebook.
„Also, we are an important partner for around 2,000 suppliers, so we directly and indirectly support thousands of jobs,” Raffel wrote, showing which are the causes that led to the company recording the highest losses since its entry on the market 18 years ago, agerpres reports.
„This is not a profit & loss statement I thought I’d make in the middle of the summer, but these are facts that clearly answer a question I have been hearing lately: ‘How come you registered losses if energy prices were so high and your turnover was far above the previous years?’ Lately, I’ve seen in the public space debates that attempt to give credit to the idea that, in these difficult times, multinational companies report zero profit or losses as a stratagem to not pay taxes to the state budget. If there are such situations, I am sure that the state authorities are doing everything necessary to restore legality. However, it is absolutely incorrect to generalize and stigmatize companies that behave correctly,” the E.ON Romania CEO points out.
He also makes certain clarifications with regard to E.ON companies, in order to put things „in the correct context”, explaining how the energy supplier was affected by the energy crisis.
„In order to ensure energy for our customers, we had to buy electricity and gas at market prices, which were several times higher, from Romanian producers or importers, and because of the cap, these costs were not included in the price paid by the final customer. The costs of purchasing the delivered energy were not recognized in full. This explains why the turnover was 13.7 billion RON, but this money went almost entirely into payments to others: energy producers and importers, transporters, distributors, the state, green certificates, cogeneration taxes etc. Practically, the supplier is left with just a very small part for covering their operating costs (IT systems, invoicing, invoice sending, investments, call-center, shops etc.). At the same time, we paid taxes and continue to pay interest for the loans we took out in order to be able to continue our activity,” Volker Raffel wrote.
According to him, the state is still behind with the repayments pledged to suppliers to make up for the companies’ own expenditures for supporting the energy price subsidy and capping schemes.