PRESS REVIEW FROM SLOVENIA, MARCH 7, 1992

Ljubljana, 7 March - THE DNEVNIK: ENERGY COSTS - The Government has stated that the planned increase in the price of energy should not bring about an increase in the cost of living, or raise the inflation level. Will this really be the case, especially considering that electricity and crude oil derivatives can definitely be counted among the articles that never fail to initialize a spiral of new price raises? Still, one has to admit that the Government has reflected thoroughly this time when and how much it will allow the price of all energy sources to be raised. It is also good that the Petrol company has been subjected to detailed scrutiny, as the prices of petrol and crude oil derivatives were in the past always higher than was necessary for the normal functioning of the company. Merely judging by the wages of the company's petrol station attendants which amount on the average to around 26,000 tolars, the company is not so bad off after all. However, the situation is quite different in the independent Petrol-zemeljski plin (Petrol-Natural Gas) company, which is having difficulty in paying the bill for the natural gas it imported from Russia in January. If the company won't manage to settle the bill, Slovenia could find itself short of 80% of the natural gas vital to its industry, wrote Romana Špende.