Electricity tariffs will rise by three per cent from the next two-month billing period, Energy Minister George Papanastasiou confirmed on Saturday.

Speaking before the the electricity authority’s scientific staff’s trade union Sepaik’s annual general meeting, he said the tariff increase arises from “reasonable expenses” incurred by the electricity authority (EAC), which he said were approved by Cera.

“These reasonable expense indicate an increase in the tariff of three per cent, and this will be attributed to the next two months,” he said. It is as yet unclear whether this means bills will increase from August or October.

The question of how much electricity bills would increase had caused controversy in recent weeks, with Papanastasiou last month being forced to deny that consumer bills would increase by 9.5 per cent.

He had described assertions that bills would rise by such an amount as “unrealistic” and “mass-market fiction”, and said his ministry’s position at the time was that “the EAC, as a regulated entity, should submit to Cera its requests regarding the expenses it claims for the current year and for its development programme”.

“This number is not going to exceed three per cent as a claim for bill increases,” he added.

A week prior, EAC chairman George Petrou had said the authority would propose a three per cent increase.

That plan came after the EAC had initially requested the 7.5 per cent from Cera. President Nikos Christodoulides then intervened to “sternly urge” the EAC to not follow through with such an increase.

Speaking to the CyBC at the time, Petrou said that “although an increase of 7.5 per cent was initially considered, the view ultimately prevailed for a milder adjustment to reduce the impact on households”.

The EAC typically files such requests roughly every two years, submitting its expenses for review, with Cera either agreeing or making amendments.

Christodoulides’ intervention was then described by House energy committee chairman and Disy MP Kyriakos Hadjiyiannis as “highly illegal”.

“The EAC told us that it requested an increase of 7.5 per cent plus value added tax, which comes out close to nine or 9.5 per cent. Cera said three or 3.5 per cent may be bearable. However, they had been told not to announce anything, not to send a letter,” he said after a committee meeting.

“Listen to the intervention made into the affairs of Cera, the supervisory authority – ‘do not send a written response, wait for what we will tell you’. This is the great political blunder, which is highly illegal, to give orders to Cera over what it will say and what it will decide.”