How did 2020 “catch” you, considering a completely new situation for the entire globe? What were the first decisions made when it became clear that life as we knew it so far would be “frozen”?

The pandemic crisis that no one expected has greatly changed the natural order of things for both population and business environment. To stop the spread of COVID-19 and in accordance with the precautions stipulated by the authorities, and also to organize ourselves better, we established a Crisis Committee which managed the activities and precautions to protect our staff and continue serving our consumers as responsibly as possible.

  • First of all, as we offer a service essential to society and the country’s economy, we have focused our efforts on providing an uninterrupted 24/7 supply of electricity for the population, hospitals, and medical centers sufficient for their basic needs. We reorganized the work of our staff from the dispatching service, the 24-hour telephone office, and the operative intervention teams so that they could continue their activities according to their regular schedule.
  • Our staff was provided with necessary means of protection and disinfection at work and trained on working safely during the epidemiological period. Many office employees were transferred to the remote regime, working via information systems. These steps allowed creating safe, well-sanitized spaces and keeping recommended physical distances.
  • At the same time, all the remote communication channels were activated to the maximum level using the 24h Telephone Office, online on the companies’ website, email, and social networks, offering our customers alternative possibilities to pay their invoices and solve any commercial and operational problems.

Due to the organizational and operational steps taken, we managed to ensure operational activities and provide a continuous service to our consumers. At the same time, it should be emphasized that due to the mobility restrictions imposed on everyone and in the context of the central and regulatory authorities’ decisions, we were faced with a deficit of revenues and a considerable increase in debts, an issue we still feel today, and we do our best to normalize this situation.

What opportunities has this pandemic period created for you?

During this period of time, we have been focused on work process digitalization and offering remote services.

- Internally, we have revised certain internal processes by adapting our management systems to remote work for some categories of our staff, thus preparing regulations on organizing these activities. Teleconferencing has replaced many meetings or visits held previously.

- Externally, we have intensified online communication possibilities with our customers, starting with accepting copies of invoices by email, paying them via the Internet, sending counter data by phone or online and also filing various requests and presenting necessary documents for network connection, issuing contracts, etc. It should be specified that most activities of our distribution company take place on the spot, such as electrical network maintenance and repair, and office services, both distribution and supply, had already been available online to all our consumers. This crisis period increased people’s need to use them, mostly in order to protect their health, and also for the convenience, safety, and using their time and resources efficiently.

Digital transformation is more and more relevant and becomes an opportunity we must make the biggest advantage of, aiming at our present and future; hence, we will continue improving and always adapting to our consumers’ expectations and needs.

Social responsibility is an essential component of big business. How is this commitment expressed in case of the COVID-19 pandemic?

Our company already has traditions of cooperation with society, investments we make in education projects, supporting talented young people, integration of persons with disabilities, environmental protection, and actively promoting energy efficiency. An eloquent example in this regard is the Solidarity Day program launched in 2015 and continuing to this day; through it, we have managed to offer scholarships for 28 young people who had excellent academic results, but limited financial resources – a project having a total value of 250 thousand Euros. We do it both at the company level and in cooperation with our employees who are volunteers for various social projects within Premier Energy in Moldova. Efforts are often combined to reach a greater impact. An eloquent example in this regard was our recent solidarity action for supporting healthcare institutions in the Republic of Moldova: through it, we donated over 450 thousand lei for purchasing medical equipment and protective equipment for medical staff combating the pandemic. This amount consisted of our employees’ voluntary donations and the contribution from the company’s resources and was intended for purchasing a batch of 7 high-performance medical equipment units particularly necessary in these difficult times. They are used for treating in-patients in the intensive care unit, but at the same time they can be used by the medical staff of Chisinau Municipal Clinical Hospital No 1 in the long term.

In the same context, I could mention that we rapidly provided power supply for the Temporary Screening Center for patients suspected of having contracted COVID-19 at Moldexpo, where, for better reliability, our company provided and installed a mobile generator as an autonomous energy source, bearing all the expenses related to its functioning.

In such difficult moments, we all have to mobilize and act considering our responsibility and commitment to society, contributing to our operational capacity and our personal efforts in order to overcome such an unprecedented pandemic crisis as soon as we can.

If we talk about the company’s activity in general, how has it been evolving in recent years?

The history of our enterprises starts in 2000, after the privatization of 3 state-owned enterprises out of the 5 included in the privatization program by the Government of the Republic of Moldova; they were purchased by Union Fenosa, the Spanish energy company later known as Gas Natural Fenosa. At that moment, the country’s economy, especially the energy sector, was in a profound crisis involving multiple rotating blackouts, approximately 4700 hours per customer, losses of about 32% of energy, and cash receipts at the level of 30%; at that time, barter was a very widespread phenomenon. Due to implementation of a new corporate management and human resources model oriented towards efficiency and labor productivity, investments in modernizing power networks, and applying new technologies and information systems, the company significantly developed and managed to improve the quality of service for the benefit of the population, the well-being of society, and improvement of the country’s economy in general.

Currently, we serve over 960 thousand consumers in approximately 70% of the territory of the Republic of Moldova. We manage to cope with this task having approximately 700 employees working with the support of about 900 other professionals of the contracted entrepreneurial companies. For comparison, we would like to mention that, before privatization in 2000, the staff of the 3 state enterprises included over 3 thousands of employees, and the number of consumers served was 745 thousand.

The effective investments made by Premier Energy in the energy sector of the Republic of Moldova contribute to the development of other sectors of the national economy, creating modern service profiles. The company receives goods and services from about 180 companies, 50 of which have yearly invoices of over 200 thousand lei.

Due to efficiency programs and investing over 287 million Euros in modernization and expansion of the electricity networks, we have managed to improve all the quality indices: energy losses, average service renewal time, average service interruption time per customer, as well as to offer our household consumers connected to low voltage networks a 37% lower electricity distribution tariff compared to the one offered by the state energy company in the north (according to the tariffs approved for 2019).

Premier Energy companies in Moldova cooperate and contribute to the country’s economic development both by applying its management model based on corporate social responsibility and by making direct contributions to the state public budget; they have paid taxes and fees at the amount of 4.3 billion lei during two decades of its activity.

What is your biggest success, what results have brought you the biggest reserves, what are you going to keep working at?

Over the years, we have managed to continuously improve the quality of our services and make working processes more efficient, and these visible results influence quality indices and lower tariffs paid by our consumers. For instance, the energy loss indicator, a very important one for our sphere, has been reduced from 32.2% in 2000 to 8.1% in 2019. The impact of this reduction is financially felt by all the energy consumers due to reducing costs, because tariffs reflect these losses. Can you imagine what the current tariff would have looked like if energy losses remained at the level of over 32%? That would mean additionally including over 30 million Euros per year in the tariff.

Besides, one of the most important indicators of supply quality is SAIDI – the System Average Interruption Duration Index. In 2004, this index was 18.1 hours per customer, in 2010, 11.4 hours, in 2015, 4.4 hours, in 2018, 3.8 hours, and in 2019, 2.3 hours. As we can see, the result is obvious, and our objective is to continue our efforts to make it even less. Reducing this index depends on the level of investment in network modernization, but it is influenced by such external factors as complicated weather conditions, rough weather, businesses’ and population’s non-compliance with electricity protection zones, and a such a shameful phenomenon as stealing equipment and transformer oil, which leads to installations working improperly and damaged disconnections. To combat this criminal phenomenon, we need interventions of law enforcement authorities.

Renewing and modernizing electricity networks is still a challenge and a basic objective we focus on. Premier Energy Distribution invests an average of 14-15 million Euros per year, the largest part of which, approximately 85%, is invested in renewing high, medium, and low voltage networks and transformer stations. It directly contributes to ensuring reliability and improving the quality of services.

In the new conditions, what can the state of the Republic of Moldova do so that large investments could continue providing a significant number of jobs and support the state budget?

We are aware of the fact that the impact of the crisis have been and will continue to be felt not only from the medical point of view, but also socially, by the population and all the spheres of economy: some companies have reduced their activity, and others even had to temporarily cease working.

For example, from March to May, we stated a reduction of about 20% in energy consumption for economic entities and payment difficulties experienced by certain household consumers, who had problems paying bills thus generating a real risk of lack of liquidity in the energy sector. Therefore, we found ourselves in difficult circumstances, but we had a clear commitment to cope with this particularly complicated situation and provide reliable power supply for all the consumers.

There is undoubtedly a need for the central and regulatory authorities’ immediate involvement in taking medium and long-term anti-crisis steps to support business environment and citizens by means of developing assistance programs for each sphere of economy, tax incentives, new employment in the conditions of the return of the citizens who used to work abroad, maintaining a stable environment and using fair justice as a basis. Only our intention and sustained joint efforts will make us able to overcome this complicated crisis situation.

The series of interviews "Foreign investors vs. COVID-19" are part of the gratitude campaign addressed to all foreign investors in the Republic of Moldova who during the pandemic demonstrated a high sense of social responsibility, an example model of employee care and proactivity in reconceptualizing the business . Campaign launched by The Moldovan Investment Agency with the support of the ‘Economic Policy Advice to the Moldovan Government’ project, implemented by GIZ Moldova with the financial support of the German and Swiss Governments.