Within the first quarter of 2006, the sales of Chelyabenergosbyt JSC, Chelyabinsk regional electricity supplier, came to 98.5% of the company’s sales target. The same figure for the previous year amounted to 97.4%. During the three months the company’s accounts receivable grew by 77.1m RUR.

According to PR-department of Chelyabenergosbyt, some heavy electricity users keep their debts to the company unpaid during a number of years.

The total amount of indebtedness of the Chelyabinsk Region housing and communal services comes to 141.7m RUR, including 38.6m RUR of debts made by Oblkommunenergo, the regional public energy service. Within the first three months of 2006, their debt has increased by 18.9m RUR.

The bulk of municipal unitary enterprises of Chelyabinsk Region paid up for the consumed electricity and by April 1, 2006, their aggregate debt did not exceed the total of their monthly electricity payments. However, some territories are still facing serious problems in settling their electricity payments. For example, the aggregate debt of municipal unitary enterprises of the town of Katav-Ivanovsk, Sosnovsky and Ashinsky districts amounts to 38.2m RUR, which is commensurable to the cost of electricity normally consumed by these territories within 2 to 6 months.