Poland approves higher electricity prices for 2009

Poland's energy regulator URE approved a last batch of electricity tariffs for 2009, raising distribution fees by 1.1 percent on the average, URE said in a statement.

It had previously approved a 10 percent rise in wholesale prices for 12 out of 14 energy trading companies.

"Taking inflation into account, the real cost of delivering energy will either remain flat or fall," URE said.

The end-user tariff is a combination of the wholesale price and the distribution fee charged by power companies.

Electricity distributors, including subsidiaries of Sweden's Vattenfall [VATN.UL] and Poland's only listed utility Enea ENEAa.WA, asked the regulator for price increases of some 40-60 percent.

Power plants in the European Union's largest ex-communist economy are nearly entirely dependent on coal and the electricity distributors backed their claims with rising coal prices and the cost of buying carbon dioxide permits.

The regulator had said the price rise in 2009 should not exceed 5 percent and will be the only electricity price increase this year.

Source:By Patryk Wasilewski, reuters.com