As the country continues to face a power outage crisis, the Minister of Energy and Mining, Fernando Santos, has ordered the end of electricity subsidies for the industrial sector.

The decision was made on Friday, November 17, in a letter signed by Santos to Luis Bonilla, director of the Agency for Regulation and Control of Energy and Non-Renewable Natural Resources.

In the document that this newspaper had access to, Santos points out that appropriate analyzes were carried out on information that corresponds to the stated incentive. Based on that, he ordered that “the cancellation of this tariff incentive for the consumption of electricity in the industrial sector be proceeded with”.

It is stated that the measure corresponds to the mechanism of encouraging energy efficiency for large regulated consumers in the industrial, commercial and service sectors.

In this sense, it is stated in the text, “for the year 2024, no savings certificates are scheduled to be issued, but they will be received during the first quarter of 2024 with the aim of being included in the price list guidelines for the year 2025.”

The subsidy has been in effect since January 2018, and consists of a reduction in the value of the exchange rate for the basic demand period from 22:00 to 08:00.

The letter signed by the Minister of Energy responds to the Agency’s request regarding guidelines and instructions for phase 2 of the Tariff Management Process: Tariff Documents for 2024.

There is also a provision to maintain the current marketing costs of electricity service in the residential category.

In the same way, the application of the decent rate subsidy, exemptions for the elderly, reductions for people with disabilities, and incentive rates of the Energy Efficiency Program (PEC) will continue.