Hoy newspaper’s editorialist says that while it should not come as a surprise that a foreign company in financial difficulty should decide to sell its properties or shares, everyone should take note of the government’s haste to purchase these dropped assets under present conditions: in its last year of government, with a re-election race on at full force and weakened public finances.
The writer says that when the past government chose to capitalize the electric service, this should have been the beginning of the end of the power calamities that have inundated the country. With surprise, today we have more generation capacity than is demanded, more efficient plants, but the operational structure is not in harmony. The writer says that deficiencies in distribution or failures of circuits can be traced back to a lack of generation due to lack of money to pay for fuel because the distributors are not paying the generators, or because users are not paying the distributors.
The newspaper also points out that the present government is selling the idea that it believes in the solution of the buyback of the Union Fenosa shares in Edenorte and Edesur. “The country would like to believe, although it is having a hard time doing so, that such a complex problem as those that periodically affect the power market could have such an easy and swift solution such as that which the government has pulled from its sleeve.” The writer asks whether this is a solution or a very costly panacea.