A government plan offering farmers extremely favorable terms for long-term, installment-based settlement of overdue amounts concerning electricity consumption comes as good news for the power utility PPC, owed an estimated 100 million euros by farmers.

As part of its effort to appease protesting farmers in Greece, the government is offering interest-free, installment-based settlement of overdue electricity-bill amounts over ten-year periods.

One in three farmers in Greece is behind on electricity-bill payments, while, in some areas, well over 50 percent of farmers are not meeting their energy-cost obligations.

In the Dodecanese Islands, 82 percent of farmers face overdue electricity bills, Grevena, in the country’s north, follows with 77 percent, the percentage in Drama, also north, is 67 percent, while 59 percent of farmers on the Ionian island of Corfu are not keeping up with electricity-bill payments.

Worse still, only 10 percent of farmers carrying energy debt are accepting installment-based, payback arrangements offered by PPC with terms that are far more favorable than those offered to consumers of other categories.

In addition, roughly half of the farmers who do accept these installment-based, payback arrangements offered by PPC end up defaulting after having serviced an average of four monthly installments.

These defaulters eventually end up reapplying for new installment-based, payback arrangements before defaulting again, transforming the process into an ordeal.