The Minister of Mines and Energy, Alexandre Silveira, said this Tuesday, 2, that a Provisional Measure to be forwarded by the government by next week should reduce the electricity bill by close to 4%.
The MP would have three specific focuses: the compatibility of transmission lines, which should increase the availability of energy from wind and solar sources; permission to use Eletrobras funds to reduce distorted tariffs in locations in the North and Northeast; and the securitization of 26 billion reais owed by Eletrobras to pay the Covid bill and Water Scarcity.
“We are going to pay these bills, allowing a reduction of around 4% in the energy bills of all Brazilians,” said Silveira in an interview with CNN. Also according to the minister, the initiative received an “ok” from President Lula at the meeting held on Monday, which was also attended by the Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad, and the Civil House, Rui Costa.
The Covid account was an operation worth 16 billion reais, with a 60-month payment period, used by the government to compensate distributors for the loss of demand due to the pandemic. The Water Scarcity account was another loan, worth 5.3 billion reais and a 54-month payment period to compensate for the sector’s difficulties with the worst drought in nine decades.
The government’s idea is to advance the 26 billion reais from Eletrobras to pay off debts and alleviate the electricity bill. The idea in itself would not be bad at all, since these resources would be allocated to the so-called low tariffs.
The strategy is to take out a loan with theoretically lower interest rates to pay off previous loans to combat the pandemic and water scarcity. The explanation for the lower cost of the new debt would be the predictability of Eletrobras’ payments, which would serve as guarantee for the operation.
The text has not yet been sent to Congress, but the experience of PT governments with reducing electricity tariffs is, to say the least, questionable. At the end of 2012, Dilma Rousseff presented a measure that caused the price of the electricity bill to fall by around 16% in the following year.
The “solution” to lower the bill, however, cost 200 billion reais more for Brazilians and caused energy tariffs to skyrocket in the following years.
