Drought and subsidies make electric bill go up four times more than inflation in the year

The Bill already has increased four times more than inflation this year. While the IPCA between January and July stood at 2.94%, the electricity to the Brazilian families climbed 13.79%. The fired in energy prices is the result of a number of factors, including lack of rain, high of the dollar and the growing burden of subsidies, charges and taxes on electric rate. It is expected that further increases undermine the income of the population. "The price has risen alarmingly and is coming to consumer payment limit", says the Director General of the National Electric Energy Agency (Aneel), Romeo Rufino. According to him, beyond the cyclical issues, such as the low volume of rains, other factors are weighing on the cost of energy. One of them is the decision to elevate the levying of charges on the Bill to play, including public programs that do not have any relationship with the electricity sector. Today, the appendages on Bill benefiting, for example, farmers, irrigation activities, companies that provide public services of sanitation and low-income consumers. "The tariff is not a bottomless bag where you can shove everything," says Rufino. From 2015, not to encumber the National Treasury, industry costs are passed on to the consumer. Since then, the rate of energy went up 30 percentage points above inflation, according to a survey conducted by marketing and consulting company Sapphire energy. This discrepancy can accentuate. Parliamentary amendments included in the original text of the provisional measure that unlocks the sale of Eletrobras distributors may increase the range of subsidies. Among the proposals are an extension of the social tariff (for low-income consumer), the rising cost of gas thermal and the inclusion of the cost of transport of natural gas in the Urucu-Coari-Manaus gas pipeline in the energy development account (CDE)-one of the major charges in the industry. All this would be passed on to the consumer. Overload. According to data from Aneel, in 2014, the costs were 6% in weight rates; last year, such participation had already reached 16%. "It was easy to transfer everything to the consumer," says the President of the Brazilian Association of large industrial consumers of energy and free consumers (Embrace), Edvaldo Santana, former Director of Aneel. He sees no chance of reduction of tariffs for the next five years and explains that the origin of most of the trouble comes from intervention in 2012 for President Dilma Rousseff in the electricity sector. At the time, to reduce the rates at 30%, the Government created the CDE to bear various costs in the industry. The original intention was that the Treasury deal with expenses. With the fiscal crisis, this plan was abandoned and the problem will be played on consumer's lap. To make the picture, the Country started to face a period of drought that has reduced the level of the reservoirs and forced the Government to put in diesel oil fired thermal operation as well. This issue has created the industry another Rhombus billionaire, which is called the hydrologic risk. To pay for the Bill, the Government raised the tariff, which saddled flags who consumes more energy. In addition, the high dollar has raised the energy from Itaipu, responsible for 20% of national consumption.