Hungary will give thousands of small businesses access to cheap electricity, at pricies similar to those applied for residential consumers, as Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Government tries to shield consumers from increasing electricity prices ahead of a 2022 parliamentary election.
The decision on electricity prices, announced by Orban’s chief of staff Gergely Gulyas, comes a week after the Government has capped fuel prices below current retail prices for a three-month period starting from 15 November. The decision on special tariffs applies to small businesses who have less than 10 employees.
During the first mandate in early 2010s, the Government of Viktor Orban significantly reduced electricity and natural gas prices for residential consumers, thus incurring losses to energy distributors, who were later nationalized.
