SEOUL, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's state-run power station operator Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) said Wednesday that it will raise electricity bills for industrial use while freezing those for households and small stores.

Industrial power bills will increase 9.7 percent on average beginning Thursday, while those for households and small shops will be unchanged.

The power rate for big corporations will advance 10.2 percent, and the rate for small and medium-sized companies will climb 5.2 percent.

The KEPCO said the higher power rates reflected higher production costs, affected by soaring global prices for crude oil, noting that the electricity charge hike was inevitable to repair essential infrastructure and expand the electrical grid for future cutting-edge industries such as semiconductor and artificial intelligence (AI).

The state power utility company logged a combined loss of about 41 trillion won (29.7 billion U.S. dollars) for three and a half years through the first half of 2024, while its consolidated debt totaled some 203 trillion won (147 billion dollars) at the end of June this year. Enditem

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