The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Edesur, power outages and complaints: How it was conceived and what the intervention means

2023-03-21T16:58:04.609Z


The Government needed a response to the crisis of the last cuts. The income of a mayor will not change the day to day of the company.


The images were devastating.

Older people who lived in buildings that they couldn't get down from because the elevators didn't work.

Entire neighborhoods that threw away their food because they had nowhere to store it.

Nights of high thermal sensation in which you could not even resort to a fan.

Restless, dejected, enraged neighbors, because they were left without electricity.

The Government took note - during the past week - of the

immense frustration

caused by the power outages.

From the Executive Power the idea of ​​showing “action”

was conceived

.

First, with fines for billions of pesos.

And later, with the "intervention", a signal that the Government sent to show that it is committed to the company.

In practice, the intervention

will not be operative

.

Edesur has already had overseers since 2014 and

there are more than 30 technicians from the regulatory body

(ENRE) who are there doing an audit.

The Mayor of Avellaneda Jorge Ferraresi will not have access to

any new information

.

Everything you need to know about Edesur is already in the hands of the Energy Secretariat or the ENRE.

The official argument is that the intervention will help to materialize

investments promised

by the company.

The sight is set in the winter.

Electricity consumption rises in the cold months, since thousands of homes do not have access to gas and resort to electrical devices to heat themselves.

There are other reasons behind the intervention.

The Italian Enel seeks to get rid of Edesur.

It has already sold its generation business to Central Puerto and YPF Luz.

In the Government there is interest in knowing who the possible buyer could be.

Nicolás Caputo, considered a "soul brother" by former President Mauricio Macri,

was part of the Edesur shareholder

.

He went through Distrilec, Edesur's control company.

In Distrilec, Central Puerto and Enel coexist.

Central Puerto -which bought the Costanera Power Plant from Enel- announced that

Caputo no longer has a shareholding relationship with them.

In this way, he would have cleared the way for the businessman to point to Edesur.

The expectation of a future buyer is

that the tariff situation will change.

Entrepreneurs who orbit close to Sergio Massa

also see an opportunity to

buy at a very low price.

An electricity distributor in a large city does not fall below billions of dollars in stock market valuation in any of the world's major capitals.

But

Edesur is obtained for less than 10%

of those amounts.

For a long-term business, it can be

a "bargain."

Whoever it is, the next owner of Edesur must carry out strong investments.

The company's underground network shows

signs of fatigue

, and new substations and works are needed.

A private will only do it if he knows that he can get the money back.

 The regulatory framework for electrical service in Buenos Aires was only in force for two years (2017 and 2018) from the end of 2001 to this part.

It is not a context that can show long term.

Massa does not want to expropriate Edesur.

She knows that she would face a

million-dollar trial

for a value much higher than what the company is sold for.

In addition, he would complicate his goal reviews with the IMF and his elaborate perception that he is a

"friendly" leader

with companies.

On the other hand, in the

ultra-Christian wing

of the Frente de Todos they believe that

there are plenty of reasons to carry out an expropriation.

The mayors of the southern suburbs, who suffer from Edesur's deficiencies, are in conflict with the company.

But the option of a new “Segba” (the state company that operated electricity distribution in the city of Buenos Aires and the suburbs until the privatizations of the 1990s) does not seduce them either.

They know that

you have to inject a lot of money to make the business work.

The crossroads is completed with the tariff delay.

Edesur and Edenor said -between 2020 and 2022- that the proceeds from the bills were not enough for them to even pay for the same light that they bring to homes and businesses.

A mountain of debt was generated with Cammesa, the wholesale administrator of the electricity system, which

was forgiven

at the beginning of this year.

This was so that -through the rate increases of 2023-, the Edenor and Edesur duo start from scratch and can pay.

The Government announced a segmentation.

The idea was that the higher income sectors could pay the “full” cost of electricity.

But many households did not register in the subsidy registry.

By not registering, the system puts them in the same bag as the high-income sectors (N1).

In February, the Government stopped the removal of subsidies

.

Because it detected that, in the "high income" category, there are more than a million households that do not have it but that were not recorded in the register of subsidies.

Segmentation stopped.

And that means less tax savings.

And that the companies may again not have the funds to pay Cammesa.

The supposed correction would get stuck again.

NE

look too

Controversy over the double position of Jorge Ferraresi: he will continue as mayor while Edesur's intervention lasts

Edesur: the Government says that a possible cancellation of the concession "requires study time so as not to harm the State"

Source: clarin

All business articles on 2023-03-21

You may like

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.