OREANDA-NEWS. IDGC of Centre summed up the first month of work with non-payers with the use of innovations of the Russian legislation toughening their responsibility. Since January 1, 2016, IDGC of Centre makes claims to debtors subject to the entered into force in December 2015 Federal Law № 307-FZ, aimed at "strengthening the payment discipline of energy consumers". The document eliminates legislative gaps that allowed consumers to borrow in bad faith at the expense of grid organizations, accumulating multi-million debts. Now, debtors - legal entities from the first day following the day of payment of the debt will have to pay a penalty equal to 1/130 of the refinancing rate of the Central Bank of Russia, which is equal to a bank loan, taken at a rate of 31% per annum.

IDGC of Centre, as a responsible service provider, in advance informed debtors of these legislative changes (the corresponding letters were sent to each of them as early as the end of November 2015), giving them thus the ability to repay the debt before the end of the year without paying a penalty. Some contractors took advantage of this opportunity, by starting to fulfill a contractual obligation to pay for the company's services. Since the beginning of the new year IDGC of Centre bills non-payers based on penalties. Their total amount as of December 2015 was 63.4 million rubles. In January the company plans to impose fines on consumers of services in the amount of 132.7 million rubles. Its main part accounted for electricity suppliers of last resort: JSC "Atomenergosbyt" (43.6 million rubles), PJSC "TNS Energo" (26.7 million rubles), OJSC "Oboronenergosbyt" (11.3 million rubles). However, it should be noted that in January "Atomenergosbyt" repaid 2.7 billion rubles of receivables, which reduced the level of its arrears to IDGC of Centre by 56% from the beginning of 2016.

IDGC of Centre is going to continue working consistently to collect receivables. At the beginning of the year in the courts of various levels there were 508 cases initiated by the legal unit of the company to collect debts totalling 11.875 billion rubles. At the same time, the company is still open to constructive dialogue with regard to developing effective mechanisms for debt repayment in view of the current macroeconomic situation, and in some cases, the real financial capacity of its counterparties.