The Ombudsman’s Office opposes the request for a 5.12% increase in the electricity service rate for the people of Cartago.
In a document sent to the Regulatory Authority of Public Services (Aresep), the institution presented its technical opposition and explained that, although they are aware that adjustments are necessary, the one proposed by the Administrative Board of the Municipal Electric Service of Carthage (Jasec) is out of proportion considering that the accumulated inflation to October of this year is 1.43.
The defense body supported its position with the following aspects:
-Jasec intends that, in the same act, fix rates be approved for the years 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023, a practice that, at the Ombudsman’s discretion, threatens transparency and citizen participation, since it reduces the possibility of periodic supervision that Users can perform on the operation of the service.
-The company requests to include as part of the adjustment the amount for Value Added Tax (VAT) paid in the acquisition of supplies for the years 2020 to 2022 (¢ 971.07; ¢ 988.95 and ¢ 1002.72 million, respectively).
The application presents increases in operating costs that are not reasonable and proportional to criteria and do not have adequate justification; where by 2020 items such as “generation rates” would increase by 9.9%, actual distribution expenses would increase by 30%, administrative and general expenses would increase by 8% and asset depreciation would increase by 37 %.
Following these criteria, the Ombudsman’s Office detected that the Aresep regulations have an economic, accounting and financial system with a clear tendency towards the use of mathematics in regulatory models, leaving socio-economic and economic aspects aside.