President: Utility tariffs must be made economically substantiated by year-end

  Utility tariffs must be brought to economically substantiated level in all the regions of Ukraine by the end of this year, President Viktor Yanukovych said at a meeting of the Council of Regions today.

  "We must prevent bad management and disorder from affecting common people," he said.

  "We must find the money and, most importantly, the mechanisms to modernize municipal infrastructure," he said. Viktor Yanukovych added that the money received from consumers are clearly not enough to cover the costs, so the mechanism of public-private partnership should be used to raise additional funds.

  Among the key areas of improving the tariff policy the President named technical re-equipment and energy consumption reduction. He stressed that promising in this regard would be pilot projects aimed at saving energy resources and improving energy equipment performance.