FAMILIES OWE 124BN FORINTS TO ENERGY PROVIDERS

By June this year Hungarian households had amassed a debt of
124 billion forints (EUR 415m) owed to energy providers, daily Magyar Nemzet
reported on Monday. The paper said that 1.4 million customers had fallen
in arrears with their gas, electricity or district heating payments. Out of the
grand total, about 44 billion forints are made up of debts outstanding for
more than a year. By June, electricity had been cut off in over 40,000 nonpaying
households, while 68,000 homes were excluded from the gas service and over 5,500 from district heating, the paper said.

MTI