The impact on electricity, businesses and the fear that the dollar price will rise

– The government did not foresee the impact of the increase in electricity. The government has decided that customers pay more for the electricity they consume. Today, 80% of that cost is subsidized by the executive. However, in the Executive can not yet predict the impact of this measure on the tariffs in Buenos Aires and in the interior. The data displayed yesterday reflected only one category, when there are any nine kinds of customers. This leaves most customers unsure how much they will pay in the summer, the busiest time of year.

– Differences persist between unsubsidized and partially subsidized customers. The government has reported a staggered removal of subsidies (in tranches) in gas. But he could not clarify what the removal of that benefit in electricity will look like. There was no distinction between customers who will lose benefits (considered high-income, no longer receiving benefits) and those who will keep a portion (median income) of those discounts.

– There will be effects on trade. Water bills for “non-residential” customers (such as businesses) will increase from $ 2,800 per month to over $ 7,000. This will happen to 300,000 water and sewage service customers, according to Aysa. The redial will also affect the electricity and gas bills of these customers.

– Customers have yet to be identified and grant registration continues. In the Government they admit that they do not yet have all the information on households with electricity supply, since the supply of this service is sometimes the responsibility of cooperatives and small businesses. Missing data. The preparation of grants registers remains open until the end of the month. Furthermore, among the 4 million families who have not signed up, there are thousands who will continue with the “social rate”, according to the Secretariat for Energy. It’s because they failed to register, the government says it has the tools to identify them.

– Gas tariffs. The Secretary of Energy has defined that he will continue to subsidize certain levels of consumption. They will be different depending on the customers and the areas they live in (higher in cold areas). But the subsidized “blocks” have been calculated on an annual basis, when consumption moves in another way: they are very high in winter and low in summer. The government says it will ask distributors to inform their customers on how their consumption is arriving, so that they can anticipate in which months they must be “careful” not to exceed their subsidized block.

– The gap between Buenos Aires and the rest of the country. Indoor electricity bills double those in Buenos Aires and the suburbs. Although all electricity distributors pay the same for electricity, the difference lies in the margins applied by each distributor for the provision of their services. The margins of the interior are higher than those of Buenos Aires and the suburbs, which are regulated by the nation state.

– The impact of a write-down on costs. The gas that producers sell to distributors is sold in dollars, at the official exchange rate. There is also a component in foreign currency in the monomic cost of electricity. The government’s projections of the increases were made with costs in pesos, but the sector is moving in dollars. A devaluation of the peso against the official dollar would affect these calculations.