Page 14 - TURKRptOct21

two decades with hydro-plants playing a leading role in pillage. Turkey’s one-time forested Black Sea region has suffered the biggest damage from the building of hydro-plants.
There are currently 246 active hydro-plants in the Black Sea region, a region subject to a great amount of deadly flooding in recent years.
During a wild flood that hit Bozkurt town in Kastamonu province, the 31 MW Ebru hydro-plant collapsed. In 2013, a court in Kastamonu ruled that the construction of Ebru should be stopped.
Turkey ranked 107th out of 128 countries on a rule of law index list in 2020.
Under the so-called feed-in tariff (YEKDEM), the government provides a $0.073 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) purchase guarantee for electricity produced by hydro-plants that came online prior to July 1.
As of 2021, there are a total of 449 hydro-plants benefiting from YEKDEM with a combined installed capacity of 13 GW.
In total, 927 plants with a combined capacity of 25 GW are benefiting from YEKDEM in 2021. Turkey had about 98 GW of installed capacity at end-July.
In January-May, the government paid a total of TRY24bn for 34 TWh of electricity produced under YEKDEM; it amounts to 27% of the overall 126 TWh electricity production total in the country.
The average YEKDEM price stood at TRY0.714 per kWh versus the average market price of TRY0.319 in January-May.
The average market price rose 28% m/m and 75% y/y to TRY0.521 per kWh in July.
As a result, August electricity bills created some upset among Turks once again. On August 28, energy watchdog EPDK denied rumours claiming that there were some hidden price hikes in the bills.
The electricity price for end-consumers was hiked by 15% y/y to TRY0.916 as of July 1, the EPDK recalled.
This is the naked electricity price. When a series of taxes and service payments are added, the price at least doubles.
2.8 Business and consumer confidence surveys
At end-H1, YouTube had 50.6mn users in Turkey. Instagram, which had 38mn users at the start of 2020, gained 4mn in January-June to reach 50mn. The number of Facebook users in the country declined from 38mn to 37mn.
Twitter added 2mn Turkish users to reach a total of 15.6mn, while Snapchat boosted its membership base by 600,000 to 11.7mn.
The survey, conducted among people aged between 16 and 64 by We Are Social, also found that 45% of respondents had shopped on the internet in the previous week.
14 TURKEY Country Report October 2021 www.intellinews.com