inside they pay up to 3 times more than in Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires and Buenos Aires pay a third for their electricity consumption compared to what the inhabitants of Cordoba pay for the same concept. A house in Neuquén or Tucumán receives ballots that double those that reach a customer in the city of Buenos Aires and its suburbs. The lack of homogeneity of electricity distribution tariffs (light) once again repeats a picture that has already been experienced between 2007 and 2015.

A residential energy saving bill borders the $ 500 per month -before taxes- in the city of Buenos Aires and its suburbs, the concession areas of Edenor and Edesur. This ticket costs $ 1,407 in Cordoba. In Neuquén, it is around $ 1,000. In the following price category, but also in lower consumption, Buenos Aires and Buenos Aires pay $ 1,000 per month, while a house in Tucumán receives an invoice of $ 2,000 for this concept.

The differences in rates are linked to the area of ​​jurisdiction. Each province has its own electricity company which it authorizes to increase its margins. The regulation of the concessions of Edesur and Edenor had passed – under the government of Mauricio Macri – to an entity which would constitute the city of Buenos Aires and the province of Buenos Aires. But the administration of Alberto Fernández reversed this decision and returned these concessions to the orbit of the national state.

Although all households pay the same price for the electricity consumed, the difference It is in the margins applied by the distributors who supply them. This is what every business charges for providing their service. That we call “Added distribution value”.

The energy consumed is subsidized for everyone, because the price is uniform throughout the country. The difference is made up of distribution fees and taxes, established by each province.

From February 2019 to mid-2021, most governors authorized increases to this position. The inflation accumulated during this period exceeds 100%.

In May, the Ministry of Energy authorized a 9% increase for the companies under its jurisdiction (Edenor and Edesur). The province of Buenos Aires – which regulates the concessions of Edelap, Eden, Edea and Edes – bowed to the national government and also endorsed 9%. huge tariff gap compared to provincial tariffs which increased according to inflation ”, explains Alejandro Eintoss, coordinator of the Energy Commission of the Alem Foundation.

“A user in Cordoba and Santa Fe was paying bills between 6 and 7 times higher than an AMBA user with the same consumption at the end of 2015. Everything indicates that the national pricing policy leads us to follow the same pathAdds Eintoss, who compiled the above data.

On an electricity bill, nearlyl 40% is the production cost electric. 36% is the distributors’ margin, and 23% is taxes. The rest corresponds to the transport costs.

Excluding tax, 51% of what is paid on a ballot will cover the cost of production and 47% remains for the distributor.

The cost of generating electricity is the same for the whole country. The difference lies in the margins of each distributor. The “coverage” of the bills on the cost of electricity production is 30%. In other words, 7 pesos out of 10 of what it costs to produce electricity is paid for by the state. This is the lowest level since 2016. In 2015, the grants covered almost 90% of the costs.

Anyway, the distributors They also don’t pay for all the electricity their customers use.. The signatures will be they owe around $ 200,000 million to Cammesa, the wholesale administrator of the state-controlled power system. The companies do not cover their costs but are financed by Cammesa.

Edet (Tucumán) and Epec (Córdoba) have led the increases over the past two years. The tucumana distributor increased its rates by 71% in the consumption category 300 kw / h per month. Epec raised 71% from the most consuming customers (eg 600 kWh), although the average of its adjustments fell from 64% to 74%.

Edemsa, the distributor of Mendoza, whose shareholders, the Vila-Manzano group, have taken control of Edenor, noted a 32% in this territory of Cuyo. Enersa, d’Entre Ríos, has increased by 24% -25% the categories of smaller consumption, but in the segments that demand more electricity, it has noticed up to 97%.

According to a calculation by Edenor, each customer of this company pays around US $ 13 per month (at the official exchange rate and for a consumption of 275 kW / h, which is a kind of R2-R3 customer, considered low. request). In Mendoza, this client pays US $ 20. In Santa Fe and San Luis, between US $ 21 and US $ 22. Entre Ríos, with US $ 33 for this house, and Córdoba, with US $ 36, lead the table.

Buenos Aires’ bill, around US $ 13, is a third of the equivalent in Chile, which is US $ 38. This is almost a quarter of what the average pays in Brazil (US $ 42), still in this same consumption. This ballot ranges from US $ 58 to US $ 67 in other Latinos, such as Peru and Uruguay. A similar bill in Spain averages US $ 80, US $ 79 in the UK and US $ 69 in France. The data correspond to a presentation made by Edenor to investors, when it explained its losses in the first half of the year.