Privatized energy companies benefited from Milei’s sharp rate hikes. In all of 2023, these two companies had earned almost 130 billion. This year, their financial statements show profits of $107.580 million for the first half of 2024 by Edenor, and $52.204 million by Edesur for the same period.
Edenor is the country’s main energy distributor. According to its results report for the second half of 2024, it shows an increase of 269% compared to the same period in 2023, having a volume of energy sales in 2Q24 “slightly
lower than 2Q23”. The report details that the “new rates applicable since 02-16-24 (319.2%)” had a “positive impact” of $77,437 million for 2Q 2024, which “restored the Company’s economic balance.”
The company’s main shareholders include former Justicialist deputy José Luis Manzano, who currently resides in Switzerland, and businessmen Daniel Vila, owner of the América group, and Mauricio Filiberti, nicknamed the King of Chlorine, one of Aysa’s main suppliers for water purification.
With Milei’s deregulation, the company modified the corporate purpose of its statute before the National Securities Commission to incorporate many more areas of action. Among them generation of renewable or conventional electric energy – thermal or hydroelectric-, in electric transport, in the development of artificial intelligence and construction works for these businesses, and also for the mining activitywith the extraction of critical minerals such as Nickel, cobalt, gold and silver and those considered as such in the future.
Looking ahead to last year’s runoff Its shares on the stock exchange have doubled and are now trading 183% above their October 2023 value.. Manzano, despite having said that he had voted for Sergio Massa, organized the IEFA Latam Forum at the end of March, which welcomed Milei as a star, and offered auspicious praise to the libertarian’s economic policy.
Edesur is majority owned by the Italian multinational company Enel, which owns 70% of the shares. According to its financial statements at the end of the first half of the year, it closed with a profit of $52.204 million. With an increase in gross profit (service operating) of 1,226.6% for the second quarter compared to the same period in 2023. In the first quarter of the year, its pre-tax profits had grown by 307% year-on-year, reaching $104.75 billion.
At the end of 2022, Enel announced that it would put its Argentine assets up for sale and leave the country. But with the new Milei government, the company’s global CEO, Flavio Cattaneo, confirmed in March of this year, in a meeting with Economy Minister Luis Caputo, that they were suspending the sale of Edesur and staying in the country. “The sector needed a tariff update after many years of tariff freezes,” Cattaneo said in an interview with the newspaper El Cronista.
Juicy profits for the privatized companies that increasingly hurt the pockets of the majority
According to a report from IIEP-CONICET, which is part of the Faculty of Economic Sciences at the UBA, The average electricity rate increased by 204% from December 2023 to August 2024, well above the general inflation rate of 94% for the same period. According to the study, energy subsidies were reduced by 40% in real terms annually in the first 7 months of the year.
Adding the rest of the public services, the IIEP indicates that for the month of August an average household in the AMBA, without subsidies, spends $144,433 pesos per month to cover its energy, transportation and drinking water needs at home. Compared to December 2023, this basket increased by 380%.
In relation to salaries, the report indicates that spending on public services in the AMBA in August represented 14.3% of the estimated average registered salary for the month, while in December it represented 6.2%. This shows the impact on salaries from the rate hikes.
Companies earned millions, but the service deteriorated. A report by Compañía Administración del Mercado Mayorista Eléctrico SA (Cammesa) warned of the risk of blackouts next summer “given that no improvements are expected in the profile of the supply” of energy, a classic.
The privatized companies business must be ended, and the entire energy system (that is, all the productive stages: resource extraction, electricity generation, transportation and distribution to users) must be nationalized, managed by the workers and specialized technicians themselves, implementing a sustainable national plan to guarantee the population a cheap and quality service and to carry out the sustainable energy transition.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
