Provincial senator Rubén Dal Molín (Federation) explained the decision of the national government not to transfer to the provinces the amounts that the Nation must pay as royalties for the energy produced by Salto Grande. “They could be applied to lower the electricity rate,” he warned. .
“Hydroelectric energy is produced on our soil, but for years national policies froze the amounts for royalties that it should receive. However, now it is worse, because this national government does not even transfer those amounts to the province,” he revealed.
“In the first quarter of 2023, 270 million entered in this area. Adjusted for inflation, 850 million should have entered the provincial treasury so far this year, but the transfer was zero,” continued the legislator who has been analyzing this issue for years.
“Recovering these royalties, if they were paid in much better energy, could be used directly to improve the service and reduce the rate that we Entre Ríos residents pay. “This is one of the concerns of the provincial government,” he clarified.
Likewise, Dal Molín clarified that “the tremendous increase in the electricity bill that we see these days in our province responds to the increase in the wholesale price of energy carried out by the national government, which represents an average increase of 123 percent in our province.
He also maintained that “the elimination of subsidies at the national level also impacts the high-income segment, but extends to businesses and industry, which affects the entire productive sector.”
In this framework, the legislator from Together for Entre Ríos valued “the work that Governor Rogelio Frigerio is carrying out to correct the structural problems that Entre Ríos is experiencing.”
Among these measures he mentioned “the reduction of provincial taxes and palliatives such as the agreements with Sidecreer and Enersa to have a line of credit to finance the payment of the electricity bill in monthly installments without interest, or, with interest well below rates finances for other means of payments, speak clearly of a government busy with this problem.”
Finally, the legislator of the provincial Upper House clarified that “Entre Ríos was a province that had one of the highest energy rates, but the latest report from the Rates and Subsidies Observatory (UBA – CONICET), places our province in the middle of the table, very close to the national average and even in the low-income category (users N 2) below it.”
