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Argentina's senators are in a special session debating whether to freeze public service rates or even push back prices to last year's levels.
The bill, which was already passed by the lower house on May 9, was proposed by the opposition bloc, Argentina Federal, and would roll back water, electricity and gas tariffs to November 2017 levels. The measures, as it stands, would also only allow rate increases on these items based on users' salaries or pensions.
Senator Jose Mayans said rates must be halted because since November 2017 the value of the peso has plummeted. Meanwhile, the national inflation rate, which had hovered around 23 percent for the past year, rose to 25 percent this month.
"In November of 2017, the price of the megawatt… was equivalent to 98 pesos; today it's 1380 (pesos). It rose 1300 percent... The government decided to dollarize services, end subsidies and arrive at the prices claimed by generators.
"This is the impact that the worker receives – the pensioner, the salaried employee – and that is why people throughout the country felt the pain of the rate hikes."
President Mauricio Macri has already announced he'll veto the bill, claiming it's a "failure of the system."
Mayans, meanwhile, said "the problem is the economic plan" and President Macri's "failure" to listen to the people: "You do not listen to the people," Mayans told the Senate.
He reminded them of last week's nationwide protests where, in Buenos Aires, tens of thousands of people flooded the July 7 main avenue to demonstrate against the government's austerity measures, the devalued peso and Macri's move to take on a US$30 billion IMF loan, which critics claim erodes sovereignty.
Opposition Senator Miguel Pichetto told reporters: "This is a political message from Congress to the government that there is little social tolerance regarding the energy-heavy increases, not just for energy, but in groceries, transportation."
Interior Minister Rogelio Frigerio said the government "will not hesitate a moment to do what it has to do." The only thing that remains unclear is when the president will veto: immediately after the law is approved by the Senate, or after the June 8 organized march on Congress.
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