A fine of NIS 13 million for the IEC – General

The competition court rejected the IEC’s appeal and upheld the competition commissioner’s decision to fine the IEC following the use of its position as a monopoly in the amount of NIS 13 million, as well as personal sanctions ranging from NIS 110,000 to NIS 165,000.

Under the decision, the IEC took advantage of its position as a monopoly, harming the service received by business customers who switched to purchasing electricity from private producers.

These are actions carried out by the IEC between the years 2013-2015, in which it discontinued the services of “Client Portfolio Manager” for customers who switched to purchasing electricity from private electricity producers, the new competitors entering the electricity supply market, precisely when the government is working to compete The fact that the company is a natural monopoly in the field of electricity transmission and distribution, so that other manufacturers must actually use its transmission and distribution network.

As part of the service to business customers, the IEC has set up a customer portfolio manager, ie an available contact who accompanies the business customer and takes care of his needs with the IEC. The vitality and great necessity of the personal manager is reflected, among other things, in the coordination of initiated power outages, and in accompanying the business customer in real time in cases of faults in the electricity network, while providing information about the fault and its expected continuation. Since power outages can result in heavy financial losses for business customers due to downtime, it is of great importance that the personal escort service is for them. Private electricity producers do not have the ability to provide a similar service as the electricity company is an absolute monopoly in the transmission and distribution segments.

According to the competition commissioner, “the cessation of the service of a personal customer portfolio manager carried out by the IEC could have deterred business customers from moving to the IEC’s new competitors, the private electricity producers, and thus could have hurt the developing competition in the electricity sector.”

It should be noted that three additional appeal proceedings are currently pending before the competition court for sanction decisions of the competition commissioner imposed on monopolies that abused their status: Bezeq, Coca-Cola (Central Beverage Company) and SOS (SOS).