Latest electricity retail market figures for February show modest market share gains for independent suppliers and a slight drop for the main power utility PPC, energypress has been informed.

PPC ended February with a market share of 88.5 percent, from 89.59 percent the previous month, following a period of stagnancy.

This drop of roughly one percent was shared by the market’s other suppliers, the majority of it picked up by the bigger players.

The slight change of scene comes amid the latest round of bailout negotiations in the effort to conclude the second review. The country’s creditors are pushing for PPC to offer greater electricity amounts from its low-cost carbon and hydropower generation sources to independent suppliers as part of the effort to gradually lower the utility’s market share to less than 50 percent by 2020. PPC faces a market share contraction target of 75 percent by the end of this year.

Independent suppliers are currently struggling to meet the costs entailed in electricity supply. Besides funding campaigns to attract new customers, independent suppliers cover wholesale transaction payments on a weekly basis but must then wait for at least several weeks before receiving client payments for electricity consumption.

Returning to February’s market share figures, Elpedison captured 2.78 percent in February, from 2.42 percent a month earlier. Heron followed with 2.49% from 2.35%. Protergia was ranked third with 2.44%, down slightly from 2.69%. Watt + Volt followed with 0.76%, unchanged from January. NRG Trading was next with 0.70% from 0.66%. Voltera followed with 0.48% from 0.52%. Green captured 0.36% from 0.35%. The market share of ELTA (Hellenic Post), a new entry in the electricity retail market, remained unchanged at 0.04%, while OTE’s (Hellenic Telecom) market share made a marginal gain to 0.18% from 0.17%.