This Tuesday, the Government is signing the resolutions that make official the
increase in natural gas rates through the network as of Monday, April 1
, with the
removal of subsidies for high-income households, businesses and industries
.
The price of gas will at least triple next month and will have another extra jump between May and September.
The rise in bills will be felt mainly in the winter, when greater consumption will be combined with higher energy prices.
The official definition arrives two months late.
The Ministry of Energy and the National Gas Regulatory Entity (Enargas) had everything ready to apply the increases in February, but the Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, lowered the order to wait to try to
anchor inflation
at lower levels.
Due to the fiscal situation - the Government has to reduce energy subsidies
by $3 billion
- and the context of the sector, the decision could not wait any longer.
Energy resolution 41/2024
,
to which
Clarín
had exclusive access, establishes the new wholesale prices of gas (at the Point of Entry to the Transportation System, PIST), which are part of the supply
mix
of local production and imports .
It is worth clarifying that gas is only a portion of the bills, which are also made up of transportation, distribution and tax margins.
This newspaper consulted official sources about what the direct impact of this resolution will be on users, but so far it had not obtained responses from officials.
Level 1 (N1) homes of the segmentation and "General Service P" users (non-domestic uses) will see in April that the price of gas they had been paying triples, up to values of between $2.79 per million BTU and US$2.95, depending on the province in which they reside.
Meanwhile, N2 (low-income) residential users will pay between US$0.74 and US$0.78 per million BTU in April.
The N3 (low income), meanwhile, will pay between US$ 1.10 and US$ 1.17 for their subsidized consumption blocks, and the same values as the N1 and "P" for the rest of their demand.
Between May and September, gas prices will rise another notch to between US$ 4.26 and US$ 4.50 per million BTU depending on the area.
The resolution sets these values for N1 households and the rest of the users, although it does not specify what the subsidy mechanism will be like for low- and middle-income households, in a period in which the Basic Energy Basket (CBE) should already be in force. , new way of allocating State resources.
According to the Government's presentation at the public hearing, in December 2023, households ended up paying just 17% of the average cost of gas supply to the system: 70 cents per million BTU over US$ 4.10.
That was the effect of the four-year delay and the devaluation of the peso against the dollar at the end of 2023.
The companies had requested in the public hearing in January an improvement in their income of more than 500%, to restore the tariff arrears accumulated since the beginning of 2019 and only mitigated on different occasions by the previous Government, which always set rates behind the evolution. of inflation as a way of granting users an "indirect salary".
That update was being finalized this Tuesday afternoon with sector executives.
News in development