With the sole objective that the new tariff update scheduled for this month will fully impact the inflation index, the national Government suspended the application of the second tranche of the tariff adjustment.
With the arrival of the first cold weather in Tierra del Fuego, industrial, commercial and residential users of network gas began to receive bills with the first tranche of the increase authorized by the National Government. In practice, the first step of the so-called rate honesty process meant that in the province residential users, who continue to benefit from the cold zone discount, faced increases of over 300%, and commercial and industrial users faced increases of 1,000%.
Thus, for example, a residential user N1 (high income) category R3-1, who in March had paid a monthly bill of 6,500, had to pay triple that amount in May, 19,500 pesos.
The reality is even more complicated for commercial and industrial users, since the amount of invoices received was, at least, 10 times more expensive than the previous one. A business that had paid about 20 thousand pesos had to pay a bill of 190 thousand pesos.
The second step of the tariff tables in force since April implied that the value of gas for consumption from May to September would become more than double in price, which would have an undeniable negative effect on the inflation index in the coming months.
In order to demonstrate that the macroeconomic policies that it has been implementing are having a favorable impact on the reduction in the cost of living, at the end of last week the Minister of Economy of the Nation, Luis Caputo, informed the Ministry of Energy of the suspension of the second update jump tariff.
The letter specifies that in order to “consolidate the disinflation process carried out by the Government (…) it is reasonable and prudent to postpone in the month of May the effective application of the updates”, both the one referred to with the automatic monthly increase due to inflation such as that referring to the seasonal price of gas.
The aforementioned note does not specify when the postponed increase will become effective.
This determination will also have an impact on the cost of the electricity rate, since the freeze established in the price of gas is applicable to the value of gas for generating electricity.
