The bailout-required NOME auctions, introduced late last year as a tool to reduce the main power utility PPC’s dominant electricity market share, are forcing the utility to sell its electricity production at a below-cost level, which represents the method’s main problem, PPC deputy chief executive Stavros Goutsos has pointed out in a highly critical article addressing the utility’s position amid the new elecricity market conditions.

Such a loss-incurring approach could be maintained by an enterprise for reasons concerning its commercial policy but cannot be imposed by superior forces, the PPC deputy protested.

Authorities associating the NOME auctions with market competition as opposed to monopolies are contravening elementary economic theories concerning demand and production, the official noted.

Goutsos condemned the use of the French acronymed title for Greece’s adoption of the NOME measure, contending it was borrowed intentionally to ease the acceptance of market distortions being created. NOME auctions are also staged in France but under different terms that are not unfavorable for the country’s power utility EDF, he argued.

The NOME auctions were introduced last October to offer third parties access to PPC’s low-cost lignite and hydrocarbon sources.

PPC needs to reduce its retail electricity market share to less than 50 percent by 2019 from a little over 86 percent at present. Its share in electricity production must also drop to this level during the same period.