HUNGARY'S Prime Minister Viktor Orban says his government will continue to cut household electricity bills "by force" if necessary despite protests by energy providers, in his latest broadside against foreign firms.
"If agreement is not possible, the cabinet will cut utility prices by force to bring them down to average European levels," Orban said during a weekly interview on state radio, calling the cuts "key to Hungary's success".
He accused foreign utility firms active in Hungary of "taking hundreds of billions (of forints) of profits back home" and said companies making huge profits had taken concerted action against Hungarian families.
Orban's right-wing government recently obliged distributors to carry the cost of a 10-per cent cut in retail prices of electricity, gas, and district heating from the start of the year.
The companies affected are subsidiaries of German groups RWE and Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg (EnBW), as well as ENI of Italy.
This is not the first time that Orban, whose unorthodox economic policies have included special "crisis taxes" on certain sectors and nationalising private pension funds, has lashed out at foreign companies.
Earlier this month he told a business conference that he would like to at least halve foreign ownership of Hungarian banks, saying the scale of non-Hungarian involvement was "not healthy".
On Thursday US credit rating agency Standard & Poor's cut its outlook on its Hungary rating to "negative" in part because of worries about the "predictability and credibility" of policymaking.
It also cited concerns about the independence of Hungary's central bank and the changing of the constitution this month, something which heightened worries in Brussels and Washington about democracy in the EU member state.
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