Subsidy form: it will be Friday, but the government has not yet defined how to use it

The Minister of Economy, Silvina Batakis, has promised that the form to decide the subsidies in the electricity and gas bill will be ready on Friday. Although the government is clear it needs access to this informationyou still don’t know what they will do with the use of that data.

homes they have to fill out a form by Friday. There they must specify whether the electricity and / or gas service is in its own name or of third parties, if tenants, income levels, asset data. In principle, it must be completed by all customers. However, those who lose benefits – immediately – will be those with high incomes. Although the definition of who includes this segment is not uniform within the government.

The form to keep subsidies already carries a time when it had to be made public, which would happen this Friday. The trial is still overdue. There is another problem: segmentation does not have – yet – those who apply it.

in the executive branch there is no single criterion on how the increases will be. The parameter wanted by the former minister Martín Guzmán was through a segmentation by income (over 350,000 monthly), while Kirchnerism inclined to georeferencing, in neighborhoods with high real estate valuation. Since this is the one preferred by Vice President Fernández de Kirchner, the ruling party believes it will eventually prevail.

The initial task is Gather information. But who will make up the “high income” segment is an unstable debate. Batakis seems to support the criteria set by Guzmán (at the recommendation of the president), but in the majority of the Secretary of Energy there is resistance to that recipe.

The decree that implemented the “segmentation” – which is the removal of subsidies to some sectors – has entrusted this task to the Undersecretary for Strategic Planning, who operates in the Secretariat of Energy. That post is vacant. Santiago López Osornio, appointed there by former Economy Minister Martín Guzmán, resigned.

In this way, segmentation today has no one applying it. The Undersecretary for Electricity, Federico Basualdo, is excluded from the segmentation decree. The confirmed Secretary of Energy, Darío Martínez, has delegated the task to Santiago Yanotti. This is an official who was previously in Energy and now works in Cammesa, the wholesale administrator of the electricity system. Yanotti replies to Martínez, while Cammesa’s management is more aligned with Basualdo, the contact person who best interprets the vice president’s point of view on the tariff issue.

All families must complete the segmentation form. The high income they must complete it if they believe that the nation state should maintain tariff subsidies. The middle class also has to upload their own data, although subsidies for the vast majority of customers will only be cut in 2023. For now, The data will be used to analyze the situation.

On paper, the lower segments should complete this form. But the government has made it clear that the beneficiaries of the social plans will keep the subsidies on the electricity and gas tariffs now and in the future.

Ticket increases they will arrive only in September, according to presidential spokesperson Gabriela Cerruti. It is estimated that it will reflect the increases since July, for customers who will lose revenue.

There is almost a millions of families eligible to pay the “full” rate.”, According to Guzmán’s estimates when he was in Economics. They would have increments 300% on the bill, since they would not have subsidies in the cost of electricity and gas, which is now heavily subsidized.

In the method of “georeferencing”, on which Kirchnerism worked, the families affected do not reach half a million.

The economy understands that it needs to cut subsidies. It was 11,000 million dollars in 2021 and estimates them at $ 15 billion by 2022.