GRTU requests further 30% reduction in electricity tariffs

The Malta Chamber of SMEs (GRTU) wants the government to further reduce energy bills for small and medium enterprises by 30%.

Writing in its weekly newsletter, the general retailers and traders union said that the government was making significant saving and that this should be passed on to the businesses.

“For a long number of years, Maltese businesses not to only had to face high prices because of high international oil prices, but also because they were asked to repeatedly sustain inefficiencies of the electricity supplier,” the GRTU said.

“Now that the international price of oil has drastically gone down, there are substantial savings from the efficient BWSC operation and energy is available at significantly cheaper rates through the interconnector, we expect a significant reduction in the price our SMEs pay for electricity.”

The GRTU said that it expected the government to reduce electricity prices for SMEs by 30%.

The executive council met on Friday morning to agree on its proposals for Budget 2016: “GRTU believes that this year’s Budget should give utmost priority to the issue of enterprise competitiveness and GRTU believes that the cost of electricity impinges heavily on our enterprises competitiveness.”