Energy Minister: Energy Independence Is Serbia's Strategic Goal

Dubravka Djedovic (BETAPHOTO/MINISTRY OF MINING AND ENERGY OF SERBIA/MSEZ)

Serbian Minister of Energy Dubravka Djedovic has said that in this globally most uncertain time for energy in the last 50 years sufficient natural gas was secured in storage facilities in Hungary and Serbia and minimum quantities of the fuel have been drawn, while oil derivatives reserves in 2022 were 54 percent higher than in 2021.

Speaking at the Kopaonik Business Forum on March 7, Djedovic said the Ministry had managed to ensure that the prices of electricity and gas for households were among the lowest in Europe. She underscored that businesses' competitiveness and attraction of investment had been maintained, and that the effort to prevent global price hikes from fully spilling over onto the domestic market had been successful.

According to the minister, special attention is being paid to long-lasting problems, namely late investing in coal production, a lack of capacities for renewable sources particularly in the public sector, improvement of infrastructure, and public companies' insufficient productivity.

She said energy independence at the lowest price for the population and the economy was a strategic goal, which required increased electricity production capacities, more energy routes and suppliers, and implementation of energy transition.

There are plans, as she put it, for launching auctions for renewables, for both the private and public sector, and work is being done to improve the regulatory framework for that sector and amend the Energy Law to harmonize it more with EU regulations. She added that reforms were under way in energy companies.