Utility support scheme will need Budapest municipal assembly’s approval

The utility price support scheme the municipality of Budapest plans to introduce as of October 1 will need the approval of the municipal council which will meet on Wednesday, Gergely Karácsony, the mayor of Budapest, told public media on Monday.

Karácsony announced last week the municipality’s plan to launch a utility price support scheme where people with low incomes will be eligible for 48,000 forints (EUR 118) a year, to be deducted from their utility bills. Low-income families raising children, people living with disabilities or chronic illness and retirees with their pensions below subsistence level will be eligible for the support, the mayor then said. Elderly people whose pensions are below the “real average” pension will be eligible for 24,000 forints annually, he added. More details HERE.

The scheme, Karácsony said, aimed to fulfil his election promise to extend the “social care model” founded in Budapest’s 14th district when he was mayor there.

Answering a question about the scheme at a press conference held on a different topic on Monday, Karácsony said “the question is not from which resources will we be able to pay the scheme, but […] that the capital city should fulfill my election promise of providing utility support to pensioners and families in need”.

The mayor said the scheme would involve around 150,000 households and cost over one billion forints.

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