Electricity and gas concessions: they extend the deadline for completing the form and the new rates are already in force

From this Monday. The new tariff tables for electricity and natural gas distribution services are in force. The Government has instead decided to extend the registration process again to access the segmentation, as reported by the Ministry of Energy.

The increases will be applied only to level 1 users, those with the highest income, and to those who have not completed the registration form in the Energy Contribution Access Register (RASE), while level 2 (lowest income) and 3 ( average income) will not undergo any change from the rate they were paying.

Vice President of the Wholesale Electricity Market Administration Company (Cammesa), Santiago Yanotti, indicated last week that 8.5 million users had already been registered and, as Energy Secretary Darío Martínez had already done, said that they expect 11 million residential users to sign up across the country.

Level 1 users will start paying the full rate (without subsidies) gradually in a path that will culminate at the end of the year and that will be reflected in an average increase of $ 1,200 per month from September to complete around $ 3,500 from January 2023.

This user group must meet at least one of these conditions: monthly net income greater than 3.5 Total Basic Baskets (currently $ 364,758.80), owning 3 or more cars under the age of 5, 3 or more properties, one or more aircraft or luxury boats or company assets showing full economic capacity.

Users with lower incomes, have joined the social rate, they have already had a total increase of 21.6% in the first halfequal to 40% of the evolution of the Salary Variation Coefficient (CVS) last year.

Users in this bracket have an income of less than a CBT ($ 104,216.80), a family member with a Renabap (National Register of Popular Neighborhoods) housing certificate, an address where a community kitchen or picnic area operates registered and at least one member with a lifetime pension for South Atlantic War Veterans.

If there is at least one member of the household who has a certificate of disability issued by a competent authority, the total income to be included in level 2 will increase to the equivalent of 1.5 CBT ($ 156,325.20).

Mean-income users, on the other hand, received a total increase of 42.7% (80% in CVS 2021).

In this caseto be included in level 3 they must not meet the characteristics of the other two levels, unless they are level 2 users but own 2 or more properties or a vehicle for up to 3 years, with the exception of families in which there is at least one cohabitant with a Single Certificate of Invalidity (CUD).

Levels 2 and 3 will continue to have, in different proportions, rates with concessions, intended by the Secretary of Energy as “a state instrument for compliance with the principle of equality and non-discrimination”according to the recitals of decree 332/2022.

This rule established the segmentation criteria that “will allow the different groups of consumers to be identified more adequately, within a framework of greater distributive equity and social justice”.

The same decree warns that the current subsidy structure “generates profound distortions, concentrating a substantial part of its weight in sectors with greater payment capacity”, in what the former Undersecretary for Energy Planning, Santiago López Osornio, defined in the last hearing on May 12 public hearing as “pro-rich scheme.

For this reason, the law considered it “necessary to orient the policy of subsidies in a social sense, basically protecting the lower income sectors, in order to achieve reasonable energy values ​​applicable with criteria of justice and distributive equity, contemplating the different realities and situations of universe of users.

In the first half of the year, national government subsidies for the energy sector totaled $ 764,483.2 million, a year-on-year increase of 116.8%, according to the Argentine Association of Budget and Public Financial Administration ( ASAP).

In the case of the subsidies to Cammesa, intended mainly to offset the electricity production costs that make up the total distribution tariff, between January and June they amounted to $ 521,310 million, an increase of 121.9% over the same period of last year.

Tariff segmentation module

The date for completing the segmentation form available on the page www.argentina.gob.ar/sussidios has been extended, which can be completed by those representing the family group, regardless of the termination of the DNI.

More than 8 million users had signed up to the Energy Subsidy Access Register (RASE) up to this weekend, which will provide data for proper tariff segmentation.

The deadline has been extended on the web and on the National Social Security Administration (ANSeS) continues to grant shifts until 12 August for those unfamiliar with the web form.

Also, from this Monday 1 August, a time has been opened to rectify and correct the uploaded data. It is estimated that there will be some kind of penalty for those who falsified or lied in the affidavit, official sources indicated.

YN