San Marino. Repubblica Futura: “Families with lower consumption will be the most harassed”
“There has been a lot of talk about the new gas tariffs, which with the increases set from January 2023 will increase overall by 120% compared to the end of 2021: a choice which, as we have said several times, has no economic justification given the real costs the AASS claims for the purchase of gas (and which are much lower than the fixed tariff, due to the effect of the insurance contract that AASS signed months ago)”.
He writes it future republic.
“In fact, for gas, citizens and businesses will become the AASS ATM, guaranteeing it abundant liquidity and conspicuous potential assets.
On the other hand, the increase in electricity has gone more subdued, thanks to the replacement of a predetermined value with an indexed value which will be determined on a monthly basis (in jargon it is called PUN, the market price of electricity)
To date, this value referring to the month of November is around 0.213 €/kWh, but for the year 2023 the Energy Authority has estimated it at 0.266 €/kWh.
Therefore the new increases will impact an average household from 61% in December to 99% in the year 2023.
But what is most striking is the total absence of tools to protect the weakest sections of the population, such as single parents, young or elderly people alone, whose monthly consumption is often low (100 kWh). In fact, much higher increases are expected for these people, ranging from 99% in December up to 146% in the next year!
If the AASS has always provided for a minimum consumption protection threshold in its tariffs, as well as an incentive for energy saving, providing for a minimum consumption at a subsidized tariff, with the new tariff this mechanism will disappear, even creating a further distorting and regressive effect , as households with high consumption (500 kWh) will experience an increase that will change from just 18% for the next month to 45% for the year 2023.
And clearly, as market tariffs and therefore the cost of electricity increase, this effect is amplified and the weakest segments of the population (those with lower consumption) will be hit even more.
It is the Energy Authority itself who points this out, specifying that “the new tariff system approved could have a significant impact on less well-off families, already tried by a long period of difficulty due to the pandemic, the energy emergency and the flu particularly significant in this period. The Authority requests and asks the political and institutional bodies to find ways of identifying these situations, and to evaluate intervention measures to safeguard them.”
At the moment, however, Secretary of State Lonfernini does not seem to have given importance to this cry of alarm, and apart from the usual proclamations, nothing concrete seems to follow. What is certain is that from December, for San Marino families, Christmas will be less “bright” than in the past”.