(Finance) – A positive but still insufficient signal. The consumer associations thus comment on theupdate of the conditions of greater electricity protection for the first quarter of 2023 communicated today by Arera, and are clamoring for government intervention.
“The electricity bill for users on the protected market will decrease by -19.5%. This means that, for electricity, the expenditure for the typical family in the rolling year (between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2023), will be approximately 1,374 euros, +67% compared to the equivalent 12 months of the previous year. An expense which, although decreasing compared to the previous quarter, will nonetheless prove unsustainable for many families, who are already facing the past increases and which in 2023, having removed the cost of electricity and gas, will already have to face increases of +1503.62 euros for other expenses – he says Federconsumatori –. The decrease in the cost of electricity on the protected market clashes, among other things, with the pronouncement of the Council of State which risks paving the way for exorbitant increases in tariffs on the free market. Despite the recent decrease, we cannot and must not yet let our guard down on the energy front: it is more necessary than ever to make decisions and take adequate measures, more incisive than those envisaged up to now in the manoeuvre”.
the requests that Federconsumatori addresses to the executive: expanding the number of beneficiaries of the energy, gas and water bonuses (which perhaps they forgot to include due to an oversight in the manoeuvre), further raising the ISEE thresholds up to at least 20,000 euros for all households and even higher for large families, progressively increasing the amounts disbursed; take all necessary measures to free the energy market (electricity, gas and fuel) from speculation and market volatility;
have a guarantee for the long installments of bills, as well as a fund against energy poverty. “Such interventions – he underlines Federconsumatori – can be financed through taxation, even up to 100%, of the super profits of energy companies, introducing a further tax on the extra profits made by companies operating in the credit, financial, pharmaceutical and e-commerce sectors. Furthermore, it is essential to find new resources by implementing serious action to combat tax evasion and launching a tax reform that rates incomes and large estates more and work and pensions less, starting with the tax exemption of the next contractual increases for the workers”.
The National Consumer Union is on the same line. “Good but that’s not enough! The drop is certainly positive but insufficient to compensate for the record increases of the previous quarters. The bills remain hospitalized – he says Marco Vignola, head of the energy sector of the National Consumer Union –. The Government must intervene immediately. Today’s reduction is exclusively due to the fortunate good trend in wholesale electricity prices and the mild climate, certainly not to the maneuver or to the Dl Aiuti quater in which we limited ourselves to copying what Draghi did, with the the only exception is the raising of the Isee threshold from 12 to 15 thousand euros for social bonuses. It is urgent to postpone the end of the protected gas market scheduled for condominiums and associations in just 3 months, on April 1, 2023″.
According to the study by the National Consumer Union, in fact, if for a typical family the -19.5% means spending 348 euros less on an annual basis, the total expenditure in 2023 (not, therefore, according to the rolling year, but from 1 January 2023 to 31 December 2023, assuming constant prices) actually arrives at figure of 1434 euros (112 euros more than the 1322 spent in 2022 according to Arera), which added to the 1714 for gas due to the update a month ago, determine a total sting equal to 3148 euros. If the price of light drops by 19.5% compared to the current one in the fourth quarter of 2022, it rises by 15.4% compared to a year ago, i.e. compared to the first quarter of 2022 and by 164.8% compared to 2021. The bill for the January-March 2022 quarter will grow by 48 euros compared to the corresponding period last year, going from 310 to 358 euros for the typical family.
“The reduction in electricity tariffs is good news, but the decrease ordered by Arera is not sufficient to recover the effects of the increases recorded in the last year – states the Codacons –. With the new tariffs that will take effect in January, the average electricity bill drops to 1,434 euros per year per family, with savings of around 348 euros per household on an annual basis. However, the tariffs for the first quarter of 2023 are still 15.4% higher than the electricity prices in force in the first quarter of 2022, with the balance therefore remaining negative for Italian families”.