4 October, Minsk /Ekaterina Markovich - BELTA/. In Belarus, the payment for almost all housing and communal services is differentiated to a certain extent. Anatoly Shagun, Deputy Minister of Housing and Communal Services of Belarus, announced this today during an online conference on the BELTA website.
"One of the main objectives of differentiated payments is to encourage citizens to use resources economically, which is why differentiated payment for water supply and sewerage services was introduced at one time, and now the issue of differentiating payment for electricity is being considered. The second objective is a gradual transition to full reimbursement by the population of the costs of providing these services," the Deputy Minister noted.
According to Anatoly Shagun, the first steps in this direction have been taken for almost all housing and communal services. For example, the rate for technical maintenance of vacant apartments, where owners and their family members are not registered, is much higher than what citizens living and registered in their apartments pay for technical maintenance. "The same applies to major repairs. If an owner has several apartments, and he and his relatives are not registered in one of them, then in this case, he pays a higher tariff for heating. Thus, it can be said that in Belarus, the payment for almost all housing and communal services is differentiated to a certain extent, with the exception of payment for the use of elevators," the Deputy Minister explained.
Anatoly Shagun noted that further improvement of these mechanisms, their expansion or refinement, is still under discussion. "It is difficult to say whether they will be adopted in the coming years, but for now, everything will remain as it is," he emphasized. "Today, the issues of improving differentiated payments for other housing and communal services are being considered as one of the options for increasing the level of cost recovery by the population."
The introduction of differentiated payments is not aimed at obtaining additional profit, as the standards are set at the level of mass consumption. Their goal is to enable the part of society that does not fit within the standards to catch up to this level. "The establishment of differentiated payment for electrical energy will largely have the same goals as for water supply. Currently, the Ministry of Energy website provides proposed options for differentiated payment, where everyone has the opportunity to vote for one option or another, and a decision will be made based on the results of public discussion," said Anatoly Shagun.
BELTA