Government of Ukraine render a number of decisions aimed at simplifying the assigning of subsidies, transparency and flexibility in fixing tariffs

On Wednesday, 28 October, the Prime Minister of Ukraine announced a Cabinet’s decision to introduce a mechanism of changing the application of social gas consumption norms. The social norm is fixed in the amount of 1200 cubic meters for the entire heating season (6 months). This means that a person can decide how much gas to use within the social norms every month during the heating season.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk informed at a meeting of the Prime Minister and Government members with representatives of the protesters under the Government House, in particular, with MP Ukraine Oleh Liashko. The meeting was attended by Government members from all political forces of the parliamentary coalition.

It was also decided that in February of 2016 there would be calculated actual consumption of gas for heating purposes by the population, and estimated the need to increase the social norms in the case of a cold winter.

Apart from that, the Prime Minister signed a decree to simplify the assignment of subsidies for housing and communal services for the winter period. It will be carried out in automatic mode avoiding reapplying for subsidy.

The Government also introduces changes to the procedure for recalculation of the cost for housing and utilities companies, which will be held on a monthly basis depending on outside temperatures, instead of once in six months.

Another decision of the Government was to correlate a market price of natural gas according to the results of first quarter of next year, depending on the price of imported gas and the rate of the national currency.

Prime Minister of Ukraine signed amendments to the decree on establishment of public social standards in the housing and communal services, which envisages the establishment of correction coefficients to calculate consumption of gas, electricity and thermal energy for heating needs depending on number of storeys of buildings, the norms of use for central heating under the condition of equipping residential buildings with metering devices of thermal energy, gas supply on conditions of presence-absence of gas meters, electrical energy for individual heating systems, differentiated by the time periods.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk stressed that there are two bills in Parliament on transparency of charging tariffs and National Regulation Commission for Energy and Utilities, which was designed to ensure independence of this body.