That's lucky tenants and the owners of apartments, in which there are still no meters for electricity and hot / cold water! They will sharply reduce payments for housing and communal services. And they should be thanked for this by the chairman of the Duma committee on housing policy and housing and communal services Galina Khovanskaya - she is preparing appropriate amendments to the law №261-FZ "On energy saving and on improving energy efficiency and on introducing amendments to certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation".

The deputy proposed to cancel the raising factor when paying for services without a counter and to replace the calculation method of determining the standard by analog, Izvestia reports..

While tenants pay for the approximate amount of consumption, which determines the resource-supplying organization. According to Khovanskaya, this method is extremely inaccurate, and the standards are usually overestimated.

The deputy called a more reliable analog method. And offered to take as a starting point the house where the meters are installed. "The consumption volume shown there becomes the norm, according to which those who have not installed the meter pay," Khovanskaya explained..

According to the Law on Energy Saving. ", Until July 1, 2012. Owners of apartments that did not have counters, had to install them, and in 014 g. For those who did not, the government approved the requirement that water and electricity be paid according to a standard multiplied by a factor. From 1 January 2015. It was 1.1 and was barely noticeable. But then the coefficient was increased several times, and from July 1, 2016. It is already 1.5.

The change in the sizes of accounts in payments under this scheme is clearly seen in the example. If the normative and in fact, tenants of one apartment consume light and water for 2 thousand. rub. Per month, in the presence of a counter, the bill for services will amount to as much, if more or less, respectively. And in the absence of meters, you have to pay 2 thousand. rub. By the standard, multiplied by a factor of 1.5, that is already 3 thousand. Rubles. Only here, if more or less light and water are spent, the account will not change.

Counters, according to the Ministry of Construction, are currently installed in 70% of Russian flats and residential buildings.

The lifting of the raising coefficients is logical, since their introduction did not lead to the planned results, the chairman of the Russian Consumers Union Peter Shelisch. He proposed to assign responsibility for the installation of meters for resource-supplying organizations. And with the fact that the existing standards of consumption of utilities are overstated, the official agrees.

And the deputy executive director of the Russian Association of Water Supply and Sanitation (RAVV) Alexander Epstein called for obliging tenants to install meters. At the same time, according to him, "it is possible to discuss how competently the coefficients are set".

At the beginning of January 2017. , According to the Ministry of Construction, the amount of debt in the housing sector is more than 1 trillion rubles. And 40% of this amount is the debt of management companies to utility providers.