The vice president of the Administrative Company of the Wholesale Electricity Market (Cammesa), Santiago Yanotti, announced that the new energy subsidy segmentation regime “It will have permanent monitoring” by the national State, which will allow the scheme to be adjusted to changes in household income, through a registry that will remain open after the initial stage of registration of all users.
This means that, for example, monitoring will make it possible to modify the level of subsidies that each user receives in the event of eventualities that impact personal wealth, such as job losses or improvements, separations or marital deaths, or other vicissitudes of daily life.
“There will be flexibility, especially thinking about protecting households in the face of different situations such as losing a job, separating, being widowed. There will be a routine and daily crossing, for which the periodicity is being defined, which will contemplate these situations or imponderables such as the cost of the Basic Food Basket evolving and the salary remaining the same, or vice versa,” Yanotti said in Dialogue with Telam.
The initiative foresees three levels of users: the beneficiaries of the social rate, those who, due to their economic capacity, will no longer have a subsidized rate and, in the middle of these two extremes, those who will be able to access the subsidies.
In the same spirit, each citizen will have the opportunity to report on their own in the event of any change. In this sense, the authority of Cammesa indicated that “the Government’s decision is that the registry be permanently open, to receive new developments as they arise. The informed changes will be adjusted quickly and will be reflected in the following invoice”.
The details provided by Yanotti anticipate the operation of the new policy promoted by the national government and that, among other benefits, it will imply fiscal savings this year of $15,000 million and $80,000 million in 2023according to estimates by the Secretary of Energy, Darío Martínez.
The segmentation is in its preliminary stage, with registration enabled from today (and until the end of the month) so that users of natural gas and electricity services maintain or access a subsidized rate.
The form is enabled in www.argentina.gob.ar/subsidios and in the app My Argentinathrough the “My procedures” tab, to which is added the possibility of the face-to-face instance at the Anses offices, with prior request for a shift.
“We need every household to sign up. The objective of this measure is to protect 90% of homes. Only 10% -the highest decile- will receive a partial reduction. The other 90% this year will not have any change in their rates,” said Yanotti.
“There will be flexibility, especially thinking about protecting households in the face of different situations such as losing a job, separating, being widowed. There will be a routine and daily crossing, for which the periodicity is being defined, which will contemplate these situations or imponderables such as the cost of the Basic Food Basket evolving and the salary remaining the same, or vice versa”
And he added: “We are implementing an unprecedented system in the country that tries to better focus home energy subsidies and the challenge is to have first achieved the norm, which the President of the Nation dictated, and now we must make it work. Today a person who has a yacht or a plane pays the same as one who does not cover the basic basket of it, that is what this policy comes to modify ”.
Regarding possible prosecutions of the measure, the official pointed out that “the government’s lawyers understand that the policy is framed within the legal regulations, even accepting the latest jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Justice in the CEPIS ruling and similar, in relation to the rights and safeguards of users of public services.
“There is no retroactivity in the application, there is sufficient and anticipated communication. For those who have to receive subsidy removal, it will be partial and gradual, for which we understand that all the rights that have been legally and jurisprudentially established are protected, “Yanotti argued, in that line.
Another claim that may arise has to do with the confidentiality of personal data that will be permanently crossed. In this regard, Yanotti maintained that “today the Government already crosses data and this in no way violates any of the confidentiality rights that we citizens of Argentina have. The crossings work, for example, to grant a social rate. The patrimonial situation of each household will not be known in detail. The return is yes or no. For example, do you have 3 cars? Yes or no”.
The subsidy segmentation regime was made official on June 16 through Decree 332/22, with the objective of segmenting tariffs to achieve “reasonable energy values that can be applied with criteria of justice and distributive equity.”
The initiative foresees three levels of users: the beneficiaries of the social rate, those who, due to their economic capacity, will no longer have a subsidized rate and, in the middle of these two extremes, those who will be able to access the subsidies..
The registration form will be enabled initially from today until the end of the month, and must be completed according to the termination of the applicant’s DNI with the following scheme: 0 – 1 – 2: between July 15 and 19; 3 – 4 – 5: between July 20 and 22 and 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 between July 23 and 26. As of the 26th, all users will be able to register regardless of the completion of the DNI, according to Yanotti.
“We are going to see how the registry evolves, we are monitoring it daily. Today (on the first day of operation of the registry) we already had more than 40 thousand households entered”.
