To get the Cold Zone out of Mendoza, Javier Milei will have to overcome Congress and Justice

Javier Milei’s plans

From January to this part Milei has already given three signs that he plans to cut it. First he appointed the Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, as administrator of the Cold Zone funds – which last year ended with a surplus of $58,000 million – and which until then controlled the Energy area.

After, tried to eliminate it through the Bases Law, where he stated that energy subsidies should stop being granted by the area in which the beneficiaries reside and would have to go only to the most vulnerable who could not pay for gas service. However, this cut did not pass the screen of the Chamber of Deputies and therefore did not remain in the original text that obtained the half-sanction. Nor did the senators want to include that cut in the reforms they made to the package they received from Deputies.

Perhaps that explains why, politically, the President He again insisted on putting her in check in the decree 465 that was published this week. There it not only states that this benefit has no consumption limit, but even He questions that, for example, Rosario, an area that he describes as warm, is included.

Milei points out that By not having established consumption limits, the Cold Zone caused a chaos. He assures that from 2016 – when it began to be implemented – until January 2024, it generated “excess consumption valued at 479.6 million dollars.”

Among the arguments to get his hands on it, he points out: that these “generalized subsidy regimes They do not distinguish between residential and commercial usersand benefit those who do not need such support to the detriment of the most vulnerable, in addition to promoting inefficient consumption, and squandering the natural and economic resources of the national State.”

► YOU MAY BE INTERESTED: Milei seeks to eliminate the Cold Zone that benefits more than 400,000 users in Mendoza and has already sparked criticism

Yes ok The presidential decree is not enough to put an end to the Cold Zone, since that would require a law to repeal it, It is evident that the national government is paving the way to discuss this benefit and many other energy subsidies.

That is why a transition period was set for the mutation that runs from June 1 to November 30, with the possibility of extending it for another 6 months. Perhaps they understand that in that period they will be able to build the political support to fight in Congress.

Who pays for the Cold Zone and who does it reach?

It must be said that the benefit of Zona Fría is supported by a contribution of 7.5% of all gas users in the country that goes to a trust created for that purpose (the Trust Fund for Residential Gas Consumption Subsidies), with which the distributors are paid for the discounts they give to each user. That is to say that the funds with which it is supported do not come from state collection as happens with subsidies.

In 2023, this fund raised more than $94,849 millionpaid the costs of the system and thanks to the investments made with the leftover money ended the year with a surplus of $58,970 million.

In March, thanks to complaints from the gas distributors, it was learned that Caputo had stopped payment for the Cold Zone regime since January. This delay put in check some 40 small distributors in the country, which in February had received the payment corresponding to December. Only in mid-May, the minister went out to pay off less than half of the debt, when he released $4.3 billion.

But the root of the libertarian questions about this benefit lies not only in the fact that it does not consider the socioeconomic situation of the beneficiaries, but they also question how it was defined which areas were cold and how politics got its hand in that.

“When it was expanded in 2021, how Kirchnerism intended to get the votes to achieve the sanction They put the south of Santa Fe, part of Córdoba, a sector of San Luis and a good part of Buenos Aires into the category of cold area. They played with the isotherms as they wanted and set up kiosks to garner votes,” recalled one of the deputies who at that time opposed the reform.

In this reform, the former national deputy José Luis Ramón He bid for the entire province to benefit. Thus, the Northeast area of ​​the province had a 30% discount on the invoice, and mountain areas from Luján to the South were reached with a benefit of 50% of the total invoiced.

“This It is a right of those of us who live in areas where we have to endure three months of cold. Unlike other areas, such as the North of Buenos Aires, which have a month of cold. What the law does in an even manner, in a solidarity manner, is to establish that the most vulnerable, such as retirees, pensioners or disabled people, have a 50% discount,” defended Ramón.

In parallel, the former national deputy not only sent letters and documents to President Milei and Minister Caputo to warn them that the funds from the Cold Zone are intangible and cannot be given another destination without repealing the law, but also prepares a class action for protection that will be entered in the Federal Court of Mendozabased on the right to health of those who today have the benefit in the province.

In Mendoza they believe that subsidies should go to the most vulnerable

Words more words less, in Government House share a basic criterion that Milei defends when questioning the Cold Zone: the benefit has to go to the most vulnerableto those who cannot pay for the service.

“There is zones that are more dependent on this benefit, such as Malargüe or Uspallata for example, but It is not possible for someone who has underfloor heating in their home in Luján to have the same discount as someone who has a small heater in a small house in Neuquén.“, they question.

In Cornejo’s small table they believe that any subsidy paid by the State must only be addressed to those who cannot pay and in any case they point out that it could be contemplated stimulus plans for those who can demonstrate that they saved energy in their consumption. “If we really want to go to an efficiency consumption matrix, the criterion of considering only the place of residence, without thinking about consumption, does not work,” they argue.

“We Believe that We must maintain the criterion of giving subsidies to those who really need it and making consumption efficient, which is what we have been working on, for example with the Electricity Compensation Fund, which today has $60,000 million, of which only $1,000 million is sent by the Nation, the rest is provided by the Province. This fund today reaches 11,000 retirees and pensioners, but we aspire for it to benefit about 50,000 because we understand that the crisis flattened their income,” said the Minister of Energy and Environment, Jimena Latorre.

Both the Government House and the Casa Rosada today have another brake on moving forward with this idea of ​​subsidizing only the most vulnerable: they do not have real statistics on the population’s income because 60% work in the informal economy.

This explains why in a meeting of the Ministry of Economy, in which local officials participated, it was admitted that the political or social conditions are not yet in place to implement the shock in terms of subsidies and eliminate the Cold Zone.

► YOU MAY BE INTERESTED: Deputy Ramón urged Milei to reactivate payments and maintain the benefit of the Cold Zone