Within 10 days, a new round of rate increases
for electricity and natural gas will begin. It will be the beginning of the
monthly automatic indexation of two of the components of the invoices (transportation and distribution)
, based on the evolution of salaries, wholesale and retail inflation and even the cost of construction. It will also impact the
dollarization and indexation by the official exchange rate of the gas component
.
In addition,
the Government has pending the reformulation of the subsidy scheme
- which impacts the prices of electricity generation and gas production that is transferred to users -
and the definition and implementation of the Basic Energy Basket
. That will be the central part that will define the sustainability of the tariff system, its eventual
judicialization
and the reduction of public spending to end the fiscal deficit.
Why and how is the indexation of energy rates
In a context of high inflation, in which the prices of the economy are reviewed month by month or quarterly, at most,
the Government enabled the request to energy companies to update their income monthly to ensure investments
in maintenance that sustain the quality of regulated public services.
For this reason, on May 1, the electrical distribution concessionaires of the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires (AMBA),
Edenor and Edesur
, will see an increase in their income originating from a formula that combines 55% of the evolution of the Salary Index, wholesale inflation is 25% and retail inflation is another 20%, in this case the variations corresponding to February.
The only data that remains to be known and will be published by the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (Indec) next Friday is the Salary Index. Wholesale inflation according to the Wholesale Internal Price Index (IPIM) for February was 10.2%, while the retail Consumer Price Index (CPI) was 13.2% that month.
On the ground floor,
the combination of the already known data indicates that there will be at least a 5.2% update in the distribution component, if salaries had not had a positive variation
.
The automatic indexation formula for the remuneration of the operations of the high voltage energy carrier
Transener
, meanwhile, is 53.64% salaries; wholesale inflation at 30.81% and retail inflation at 15.55%. Thus, like Edenor and Edesur, it will at least have an adjustment of
5.2%
next month.
This will apply to all users under national jurisdiction -AMBA for distributors and the entire country for transporters-, regardless of their income level or consumption categories, both households and non-residential (businesses, small industries and public good entities). , among others). In the provinces, regulation depends on each governor or mayor.
On average, electricity generation accounts for 37% of electricity bills; transportation, 1%, distribution, 32%; and taxes, another 32%, according to market sources. Given this impact on transportation and distribution,
the final increase in bills for May consumption will exceed 2.5%, pending the salary data
.
In the case of the gas distributors
Metrogas, Naturgy, Camuzzi, Ecogas, Litoral Gas, Gasnor and Gas NEA
, the formula is made up of 49% salaries; by 36.8% by the IPIM; and by 14.2% for the Construction Cost. At least their income will rise 4.7% in May.
And finally, the scheme for
Transportadora de Gas del Norte (TGN) and Transportadora de Gas del Sur (TGS)
combines salaries by 47%; wholesale inflation by 27.2% and construction by 25.8%. From the floor, your remuneration will be adjusted by 4.4%.
In
gas
, for a household at level 3 (middle income) of the segmentation, the gas input affects 20%; transportation, 18%; distribution, 37%, and taxes, 25%. Thus,
the floor increase will be 3.3% for this reason
.
It is worth remembering that
starting in May, winter gas prices will be applied to high-income households (Tier 1), which no longer have subsidies, so they will go from paying $2.94 per million BTU to US $4.49
, indexed to the average official exchange rate in pesos for the first 15 days of April.
Meanwhile,
in electrical energy, the Government must define whether in May it will raise another 75% of the electricity prices that it transfers to users without subsidies
.