In the next few days, a bill to stabilize electricity bills will be sent to Congress to avoid a sharp rise in electricity prices.
Gabriel Boric, President of Chile
The president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, announced a series of complementary measures that the government will adopt to attenuate the prices of basic services, highlighting the injection of 40 million dollars to contain the rise in paraffin and a bill to attenuate the increases in domestic electricity prices.
The president, together with a group of ministers including the head of the Treasury, Mario Marcel, and the head of Energy, Claudio Huepe, reported that “today we signed the project that injects 40 million dollars into the Price Stabilization Fund of the Oil (FEPP) and that allows to stabilize the price of paraffin”.
This announcement materializes after the government approved a project in April that increases the operating ceiling of the Fuel Price Stabilization Mechanism (Mepco), to extend the containment in the increase in the value of gasoline, affected by the war. between Russia and Ukraine. This project will enter parliamentary procedure by the Senate in the coming days. Additionally, Boric added that “in the next few days, a bill to stabilize electricity bills will be sent to Congress, to avoid a sharp rise in electricity prices.”
Huepe landed this latest announcement by the head of state, in the context that increases in electricity rates of around 20% are expected in the coming months, as a result of the unfreezing of prices that have remained fixed during much of the pandemic. “We are creating a new electricity price stabilization system to avoid sudden increases in electricity prices. Thus, during 2022 we will keep most of the electricity bills frozen without increases and from 2023 begin the corresponding increases in a regular way. gradually so that they adapt to reality, but in a smooth and progressive way, ”said the minister of the branch.
To the previous announcements, he added that “before the end of this month the Ministers of Finance and Economy will have ready and presented a project that seeks to improve competition in the gas market.”
Huepe explained that the purpose of the project is to regulate the gas market, establishing a body that will monitor competition from a regulatory perspective, through the National Energy Commission, “which will allow periodic analysis of whether the prices at which sells the gas are the minimum possible”.
President Boric announced that he will announce a regulatory mechanism to monitor the prices that are pushing up the CPI, which in March registered the highest rise in almost 30 years, driven by increases in food prices.