Juninenses should prepare to receive gas bills with sharp increases during the next month. The fact is that in such period the planned increases will be reflected, which imply an increase of up to 600 percent compared to what was paid before April of the current year.
Thus, in July, natural gas bills add up to the increases agreed since last April and also the monthly increase for June, since in May the authorities of the Ministry of Energy decided not to apply it.
When consulted by Democracia, Pablo Torres, president of the board of directors of Grupo Servicios Junín, explained what the invoices for the current month are like and what should be expected starting next month.
“With the increase in April – he explained – the price of the cubic meter without subsidy paid by the N1 (high-income user) was 139.05 pesos, and in June it costs $156.80. “This is only the increase in the price of the cubic meter of gas, not other parameters that are in the billing.” At this point it is worth noting that the N1 does not have any discount.
“For N2 consumers (lowest income) there is a PIST (Point of Entry to the Transportation System or gas at the wellhead) discount of 64 percent. And for N3 (middle income), the discount is 55 percent,” Torres noted. And here it must also be clarified that only a certain amount of cubic meters consumed per month have this discount, but not for the rest of the concepts.
“For June – the director of Grupo Servicios Junín continued – in R1 (category of the sector that consumes the least) there are 57 cubic meters that have said discount; for R34 (the ones that consume the most) it is 132 m3. That is, the value of 156.80 pesos less the 64 percent discount or less the 55 percent discount, as the case may be, applies only to a certain number of cubic meters set as a limit for each category to access the discount.
The limit on the number of cubic meters of gas consumed monthly that has a discount is the following: R1 is 57 m3; for R21 it is 58 m3; R22, 62 m3; and for R23, 65 m3; R32, 76 m3; R33, 82 m3; and R34, 132 m3.
If up to these quantities of cubic meters are consumed, users have a discount, but generally they consume much more, as highlighted by the director of Grupo Servicios Junín. And if they exceed these consumption limits, they will pay the total cost of the cubic meter, which is 156.80 pesos.
It is known that when there are low temperatures, more gas is consumed, but this year since April the cold was noticeable and there was record consumption for that month. “There was record consumption, unprecedented for that month of the year, since the cold had arrived earlier. Since I have been here we have never bought as much gas as last April,” Torres commented.
“Precisely the invoices with April consumption are partially beginning to reach consumers. The total increase is just going to arrive, due to a matter of status and so on, in the bill that expires in July,” he warned. That is, in July the full increase decided in April by the Ministry of Energy will arrive and also the monthly increase, which was not applied in May, but was in June.
“It is estimated that each monthly increase will be lower since it goes together with the wage index, the construction index and the wholesale price index. As inflation is falling, it is assumed that the increase rates will be lower,” he noted.
“The large increase had already been decided: for April consumption it is 600 percent, the monthly ones were not many. But we can say that the full rate will only be payable in July,” he said.
Provincial report
A recent report prepared by the Buenos Aires Undersecretariat of Energy detailed that, regarding the impact on the bill of the residential natural gas user, in the case of category R31 with winter consumption, the increase (including taxes) for N1 -High Income- will be 299% (June vs. March).
For the R31 category of N2 user (low income), the increase comparing the same periods is 604 percent. For the R31 category, but for an N3 user (average income) with winter consumption, the impact on the bill is 367 percent, the report states.
