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The reduction in interest provided in the compensation received by EDP for the costs of maintaining the contractual equilibrium (CMEC) in 2013 by the PSD / CDS government headed by Pedro Passos Coelho was the first policy measures taken to reduce the costs of the electricity system and the compensation paid to electricity. The decision lowered the interest associated with these contracts from 7.55% to 4.72%, but this reduction – in the unfavorable role to EDP – was negotiated with the electricity company and included counterparties for the company in terms of insurance and collateral. interest receivable on the tariff debt. The information is in line with the height revealed on Tuesday at the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission on the sector's excessive revenues.
Former President of the ERSE (Regulatory Authority for Energy Services) Vítor Santos and current regulator, Cristina Portugal, heard in committee, agrees on the benefits and the significant impact of this initiative, which will have saved 120 million euros – about 14 million euros per year. But both were surprised by the revelation that this reduction in so-called electricity rents was negotiated between the government and the EDP administration with counterparties for the company at the level of the power guarantee and the conditions of remuneration of the tariff deficit Government. These costs are paid by the consumers of electricity.
The former and current head of the energy regulator was confronted with this negotiation Tuesday at the respective hearings of the parliamentary commission by the leftist Bloc member Jorge Costa. The MEP, rapporteur of the inquiry commission, first stressed the reference in the text of the decree published in 2013 to the methodology proposed by EDP to lower the nominal interest rate applied to the fixed component of the CMEC
Vítor Santos, the president of the ERSE at the time, admitted that he had concluded that such an express reference would aim to avoid future litigation by the company.
But the interpretation made by the former president of the ERSE was contradicted by Jorge Costa, who invoked the correspondence of correspondence between the office of the l & 39; The Minister of the Economy, Álvaro Santos Pereira, and the direction of EDP, including President António Mexia, who preceded the approval of this ordinance. In these letters, to which the Observer had access, the conclusion of the privatization process of EDP in 2012 was announced, with the sale of 21.3% to China Three Gorges and the need to conclude a program of communication to avoid regulatory instability [19659002] The negotiation of cuts in electricity revenues, one of the measures demanded by the troika, was delayed by the executive not to disrupt the sales process the state's participation in electric power, also required operation of international creditors. In a communication addressed to the Minister of Economy Álvaro Santos Pereira in May 2012, the president of EDP, António Mexia, referred to an agreement signed with the government in April and whose terms had already been validated by the general and supervisory council.
This letter was accompanied by an appendix with a study by the consulting firm Nera which, according to EDP, "demonstrated the lack of alleged excessive income at CMEC (costs of maintaining the balance contractual), prejudice "
This letter was sent three months after the resignation of the Secretary of State, Henrique Gomes, who advocated greater cuts in electricity payments on the basis of a study conducted by a According to the correspondence exchanged between EDP and the Passos Coelho government in 2012, the company wanted, in return, to accept a reduction in payments to the companies' shelters CMEC
- The attribution of a power guarantee, a subsidy paid to the production centers to be available for production, to all the factories that were in the market regime of 6,000 euros a year without time limit and paid at the end of the year. During the adjustment program, this grant was suspended. An incentive to invest in new dams or reinforcements of power was also planned. Both mechanisms, justified in the name of security of supply, are financed by electricity tariffs.
- The definition of interest rates to offset the tariff deficit was equal to or greater than the costs that EDP had on the market with its financing. This measure by the available information would have been the one that would have benefited the company the most, because the allocation of the guarantee of power was no longer guaranteed by the current government, being attributed to the auction, and has since been suspended for this year. to Cristina Portugal, deputy of Bloco said that he only learned now from counterparts negotiated by EDP to accept the fixed rate reduction of the compensation component paid by the CMEC. "This gives me something new," said the president of ERSE who assured that he did not know the counterparts nor any advice given by ERSE on this negotiation.
One of the counterparts required by electricity went through the rate setting criterion, set annually by the government, for the compensation of the tariff deficit, that is to say, the Interest of the system debt towards EDP which are paid each year in the electricity tariffs. In a letter to Artur Trindade, then Secretary of State for Energy, signed by António Mexia and João Manso Neto, then in charge of production, the company argues that the transfers paid to compensate for the tariff deficit – electricity interest rate – "should not have a lower rate of pay than the marginal cost of financing the EDP group."
Relying on the financial crisis that affected Portugal and the electricity itself, whose debt was very high, the managers proposed to weight the capital costs external (loans) associated with market transactions in the last six months. EDP was prepared to transmit in a "true, complete and accurate" way the elements of the Group's financing transactions carried out 12 months previously with the member of the government to the energy authority, which should fix every year the rate
At the hearing before Parliament, the President of ERSE acknowledged that EDP had obtained a gain of the order of $ 80 million. Euros only in securitization transactions of tariff debt. Assuring that the system's debt will be amortized with a reasonable return, the electricity company managed to go on the market to put this deficit with the financial institutions at a favorable interest rate, compared to that received in the prices of electricity.
In the letter accompanying the correspondence sent by EDP to the investigation commission, the president of EDP Produção explains that the accounts presented by the Bloc MP from the left in the inquiry committee point to gains of the order of 200 million euros. The requested documents relate to the repeal of the rights recognized by law to EDP, provided in the 2004 Diploma Establishing the Contractual Maintenance Maintenance Cost (CMEC) scheme, therefore "involve the necessary collusion of the company, to allow the reduction on the interest rate producer's proposal, but only in the sense of the respective reduction, to the detriment of EDP, and in particular as a possibility the possibility of EDP Produção to effect the transfer of the right to receive the respective amounts "
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