Electricity tariffs rise by 14% in the province of Buenos Aires

The removal of electricity subsidies is starting to impact different distributors. From June, distributors will have to pay the seasonal price of energy (PEST, which is the technical name of electricity itself) 26% more than now. And each province will have to decide how to transfer it to their customers.

It is because companies they will not absorb the increase in electricity and will pass the increase on to the user. It is estimated that about half of an electricity bill is the cost of the electricity itself. By increasing this component, the increase reflects this change.

In the province of Buenos Aires, the government of Buenos Aires will adjust the electricity tariff of 14%. The increase will be felt in the July bills and it is somehow below the increase that Edenor and Edesur will have, which will be 16.5%.

A series of administrative steps are still needed to finalize this increase, but official Buenos Aires government sources told DIB, a Buenos Aires newspaper association, that the increase will be 14%.

The Board of Directors of the Buenos Aires Province Electricity Control Agency (OCEBA) meets every Wednesday. From there, a 14% increase has already been decided so that Buenos Aires electricity distributors pay a higher price for the electricity consumed by their customers.

OCEBA has drawn up a fee table, which must be approved by its board of directors. Later it will transfer the work to the provincial Ministry of Infrastructure and Public Services. From there will come out the final order to establish a new rate chart.

The 14% increase will last all distributors located in the province of Buenos Aires, except Edenor and Edesur, which are regulated by the Enre, which depends on the national state.

The province can advance with increases without the need for a public hearing.

In 2021, Distributors in Buenos Aires increased their tariffs by 7%. Now, to the 22% increase in March, a second will apply which will be 14%, with a peak of almost 15% for a handful of users.

It will apply from June, with an impact on the July voting. The accumulated increase between the two rounds reaches 36%. That would be half of what economists calculate as inflation this year (they place it above 70%).

Since the beginning of the month, el National regulatory body for electricity (ENRE) complied with an order of the Ministry of Energy and published the new tariff tables in force since June, with an average final increase of 16.5% for most residential users.

But Enre has jurisdiction only over the electricity distributors of the suburbs and cities of Buenos Aires, Edenor and Edesur. In the rest of the country, the provincial bodies are responsible for transferring the increases approved by the Energy Secretariat to residential users.

During Mauricio Macri’s administration, it was proposed that control of Edenor and Edesur be shifted to a bipartite entity between the city of Buenos Aires and the provincial government. But the current ruling party rejected that decision and returned to Enre the powers to control Edenor and Edesur.