Reuters Summit-Czech CEZ says sees CEE power demand rising 2 pct

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Czech power company CEZ expects demand for electricity in central and eastern Europe to rise by 2 percent a year over the long term, its development chief, Jiri Feist, said on Wednesday.

CEZ has been on the expansion trail across central and eastern Europe, trying to acquire existing capacities or build new ones and enter distribution networks.

It has cashed in on soaring power prices in the region, which has seen an increasing power shortage due to fast economic growth and the closure of nuclear power stations in Slovakia and Bulgaria as part of their European Union entry agreements.

"There is a discussion about savings, I think there is big potential in our region...but I think that anyway there will be consumption growth," Feist told the Reuters Central European Investment Summit.

"We can talk about 2 percent (annual rise) in the long term, in the short term it may be a little bit more than 2 percent."

CEZ has joined other European utilities in the race to buy or build up capacity, especially in the Balkans, which cannot be supplied from central Europe due to insufficient power lines.

Feist said this led to a decoupling of the central European markets, where prices converge toward Germany, from the Balkans where they have soared significantly above.

This imbalance will last for several years until new generation plants are built, Feist said.

CEZ said earlier on Wednesday it had submitted an indicative offer for a 49 percent stake in a planned 2,000 megawatt nuclear power plant in Bulgaria, and Feist listed a number of other projects to raise capacity in the region.

(For summit blog: http://summitnotebook.reuters.com/)

(Reporting by Jan Lopatka, editing by Sue Thomas; Vienna newsroom)

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Keywords: CEE SUMMIT/CEZ DEMAND

[VIENNA/Reuters/Finance.cz]