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It’s not just high fuel costs that empty Italians’ pockets and it’s not just excise duties among the economic emergencies that the government finds on the table upon returning from the summer break. Gas bills for vulnerable users also increased by 6.9% in August, marking the fourth consecutive monthly increase.
Consumer associations are asking the government to intervene immediately, before the arrival of winter and the increase in consumption linked to the turning on of heating, by lowering VAT and cutting system charges, as already done by the Draghi government after the outbreak of the war between Russia and Ukraine.
The rate rises to 143.72 cents per cubic meter
Arera, the public energy authority, has communicated the gas tariff for August for vulnerable users: 2.3 million families for whom the price is still set by the state.
For these users the rate rose to 143.72 euro cents per cubic meter, compared to 134.40 cents in July, with a monthly growth of 6.9%.
What matters is the price of the raw material gas, net of system charges and dispatching costs: between July and August it went from 56.68 to 64.15 euros per megawatt hour, due to the war in Iran.
The Arera protected tariff does not apply to the majority of users, who are on the free market and have the price established by the market. Many also have fixed rates that are not affected by price fluctuations. The monthly price set by the Authority represents, however, an indicator of the market situation.
August is the fourth consecutive increase in the protected tariff. The trend in the international price of gas in recent weeks, which reached over 70 euros per megawatt hour in Amsterdam, does not currently suggest improvements for the coming months.
The associations ask to reduce VAT and charges
Codacons calculates that for vulnerable users the August increase will increase the annual expenditure on gas by 102.6 euros.
«But, with all due respect to the energy company lobby, which is desperately trying to deny the increases to the detriment of consumers, tariffs have skyrocketed even on the free market – writes Codacons -. In August, according to Istat, the annual price increase was 11.3% for gas, while electricity increased by as much as 17.9%”.
For the National Consumers Union, «either the government intervenes in September, as Draghi did, lowering the VAT on gas to 5%, or the budgets of middle-class families will go haywire, while the less well-off classes will not be able to pay their bills. This is a national emergency. The government cannot continue to look the other way.”
Assoutenti asks the executive for “more effective measures on taxation”, through the reduction of VAT on gas to 10% and the cutting of system charges that weigh on bills.
Furthermore, according to the association, “a structural measure is needed on the price of energy, which can no longer be determined either with the PSV or with the TTF, but with a real relationship between costs and revenues, and it is essential to proceed with the expected decoupling between energy and gas, which alters the final prices for consumers”.