Another early warning José Peñuela July 10, 2023 – 12:01 AM
* Watch out for public services law reform
*The Government cannot repeat the mistakes
On. This is how the alerts are before the government announcement that in the second parliamentary term, which should begin on July 20, a bill will be presented to reform the framework laws that govern the provision of public services in Colombia. This is a regulatory adjustment that must be applied with extreme caution and consideration, due to its high impact.
Given what happened with the pension, health and labor reforms (the latter already collapsed), whose process by the Senate and the Chamber has been very traumatic, especially since the Government did not accept a real and effective agreement on its scope, it is understood that in the face of the announced intention to modify laws such as 142 and 143 of 1994, which are the basic rules for the provision and regulation of public services, different sectors request that the same political and, above all, technical error not be made.
Prevention is not free, since the Petro administration already tried to ‘get a tooth’ into this sector through a controversial decree last February through which the President of the Republic sought to resume the functions of a general nature delegated to the Commission Drinking Water and Basic Sanitation Regulation (CRA) and the Energy and Gas Regulation Commission (CREG).
The questioned decree was immediately sued and the Council of State applied precautionary measures from the outset, suspending their effects while making a substantive decision, which it finally issued last week. The highest court for administrative litigation struck down the disputed rule, not only because Casa de Nariño made serious formal errors when issuing it, but also because the Constitution clearly establishes that the process of setting public service rates is the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress and not the executive
After that failed attempt, the Casa de Nariño announced, then, that it will resort to a bill. The union of public and private companies that provide these services has already urged the Government to agree on the scope of the initiative, under the thesis that a weighted modernization to a legal framework that is about to celebrate three decades is necessary. It is evident that there are operational, technological, financial, environmental, territorial, urban and development aspects, as well as market and evolution in supply and demand, that need to be updated and regulated more accurately and precisely to increase coverage standards. , quality and efficiency in the provision of said services. Generators, providers, network operators, regulators and users, all must be taken into account.
This will only be possible if the Government prevents the reform from ending up proposing anachronistic schemes, strongly ideological, aimed at attacking private participation in the provision of these services or, worse still, proposing tariff systems that threaten the financial balance of companies or lead to to the creation of a statist and welfare scenario, loaded with expensive and non-targeted subsidies.
The experts call attention to the risk that the Government seeks to affect the autonomy of the CREG and the CRA, modifying the functional hierarchy between them and the sectoral Superintendency. Although it is true that progress must be made in the regulation of the so-called “vital minimums” in terms of water, gas, energy and internet service, it is requested to avoid an incentive to the culture of non-payment or affect the economic balance of the provider companies , whether public or private. It is also not possible to incur in a reform that increases the workloads of these companies, encourages strikes or that overestimates the role of users in their decisions and boards of directors. It is equally worrying that it is about opening up the spectrum of authorized providers, allowing these highly specialized tasks to instances that do not have the expertise, capital or technical capacity to do so.
It is clear, and multiple sectors agree on this, that the reform of the public services law must be framed within the criteria of sustainable development, preservation of non-renewable natural resources and, above all, energy transition. But this must be based on objective and functional measures, alien to radical political discourse. Only then will there be tariff balance, higher quality standards, business viability and a user with enforceable and verifiable rights and duties. Supply and demand require viable adjustments.
With a Congress in which it does not have majorities, the parties are very wary of their refusal to agree, as well as unions and the private sector urging that the reform be based on diagnoses and technical and modern horizons, the Government would make another serious mistake if it seeks to modify the legal framework for the provision of public services under a capricious, unilateral and anachronistic ideological approach.