The Mexican State prepares the indemnities for the companies whose contracts will be canceled once the constitutional reform in electrical matters, although they will practically not be necessary because these firms already established or new in the country will seek to be State contractors under the new regime, even if their acquired rights are violated and a state monopoly is established, analysts considered.
Francisco Barnés de Castro, who was a member of the governing body of the Energy regulatory commission (CRE), explained in the fifth forum of the Open Parliament of the Chamber of Deputies about the initiative of the president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, which models of state-owned companies, such as ENEL of Italy and EDF of France are successful because they have a public instrument for basic supply and a regulated market with variable costs because it is cheaper, so without a constitutional change and without the imposition of a monopoly like the one sought, could strengthen the Federal electricity commission (CFE) following this example, leaving the supply, transmission and distribution of energy to the State.
In this regard, Humberto Morales Moreno, professor at the Institute of Government Sciences and Strategic Development of the BUAP, is already preparing the renegotiations of electricity generation contracts and permits, under a different paradigm with calculations of total costs and not the marginal costs that are not include the payment of the infrastructure that is acquired or the transmission and distribution, which will be returned to the Federal electricity commission (CFE) control of energy in Mexico.
“Today the generation of electricity in the country is already dominated by a monopoly, the bottom BlackRock and the 10 companies that it finances and has behind and control the market, the monopoly is not the CFE,” he said, “Iberdrola, for example, has not taken a single watt out of operation, regardless of their complaints, in addition to the fact that, Actually, Iberdrola already has more financing than BlackRock than from other sources, then it is practically no longer a Spanish company”.
Óscar Moreno Silva, from the National Association of Business Lawyers, reiterated that the changes to improve negative aspects for the CFE’s finances, such as the legacy contract regime, can be applied in secondary legislation without the need for a constitutional change, since the The initiative that will be voted on is a de facto expropriation because the permits are cancelled, it is a violation of the rule of law, because they were granted in accordance with the law, and it is also a violation to say that the CFE is going to control 54% of the generation, because investors arrived and acquired rights in a legal framework of open competition.
“The CFE according to the reform electrical It will be an organization with this control, even of energy policies, which completely violates the rule of law, which is obviously generating a lot of concern from IP, investment protections, international treaties, carrying out changes by decree without technical or legal justification,” he said. .
For his part, Jorge Tonatiuh Martínez Aviña, professor at the UNAM Faculty of Economics, explained that energy is not just another good but rather a strategic sector due to its transversality with the rest of the economic activities and that a country with the inequalities it has Mexico cannot leave it in the hands of the market, which will not respond to climatic or financial contingencies of fuels, and less to the social need for electrification.
In his presentation, he explained that after the changes of 1992, in which private companies were allowed to generate electricity through self-supply and as independent energy producers, eight years were enough for the IP to dominate 14% of national electricity generation. Twenty years later, they dominate 62% and forecasts suggest that in eight years the CFE will have only a 16% share in this activity, which is what generates income in the electricity chain.
“This reform does have a vision of the future, because the CFE is not a body isolated from society and with its stewardship it is the only way to guarantee the energy transition, which will be carried out by the State, because the nature of the private sector was only benefit even from the financing of the Mexican State, the development bank and the Afores”, he said.
karol.garcia@eleconomista.mx
