24 October 2008 Skopje _ In the following three months Skopje will decide whether to take part in the construction of the Bulgarian nuclear power plant at Belene that could solve Macedonia´s power shortages in the future.
Macedonia´s deputy prime minister Zoran Stavreski who recently visited Belene said this Friday in his column in the local daily Dnevnik that Macedonia "would participate by financing the project with a certain amount of money. In return, the country would receive part of the electricity produced".
This week Stavreski led a wider political and business delegation to Bulgaria to investigate possibilities for Macedonia´s involvement in the large energy project, which aims to dramatically improve the power supply in Bulgaria and the Balkans as a whole.
In his column Stavreski notes that he was reassured that Bulgaria is open for partnership with Macedonia.
The Bulgarian nuclear plant is being built by Bulgaria´s state-owned electricity distributing company NEK and German electricity producer Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk AG, RWE. The plant is predicted to come online in 2013.
According to the statistics, Macedonia annually produces around 6000GWh of electricity but this satisfies only around 70 per cent of its power demand. The rest is acquired from imports that rise every consecutive year.
The country gets most of its power from coal fired power plants. But experts say this resource will soon be completely depleted.