Bills, the cut in aid cancels the drop in prices

There is disappointment among consumers over the gas bill for May, the rate of which was today retroactively updated by the sector Authority (Arera): based on the trend in international methane prices in the month, there should have been a drop by 13.2%, and instead there is only a -0.2% compared to April, because the Guarantor has cut a part of the discounts that had been decided by the government to help families; and just today the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, reiterated that this is the right path, because the energy crisis is ending and aid must be eliminated. She protests the National Consumer Union, according to which eliminating the discount is “a wicked choice”.

In detail, the Arera continued in May with the gradual elimination of the UG2 discount component (bill decree DL 34/2023), used in the last year for the benefit of consumers to compensate for the super-increases of methane. In May, the price component relating to the gas raw material alone, for customers with contracts under protected conditions, was 34.06 euro per MegaWatt/hour.

However for Italians the cost of energy is slowly decreasing compared to the peaks of the Ukrainian crisis. Expenditure on gas for the typical household in the “rolling” year (June 2022-May 2023) drops to around 1,514 euros, gross of taxes, recording a -6.7% compared to the equivalent 12 months of the previous year (June 2021- May 2022). Arera itself calculates it.