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Argentines angry at continued outage

Saturday, 31 January 2015 2:04 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 31 January 2015 2:04 AM ]

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Manoel Giffoni
Press TV, Buenos Aires

Argentina is undergoing one of its worst energy crisis in decades. Its capital Buenos Aires and the major cities are facing ongoing power outages that last several hours and sometimes even days and leaves thousands without the basic service. The blackouts cause uproar amongst people and are prompting daily demonstrations against the government which includes roadblocks and pickets. The power crisis takes place amid a heat wave with temperatures as high as 40 degrees Celsius.

With the lowest household energy rate in South America, Argentina still has to cope with an over 7 billion US dollars annual energy deficit. Although the government claims the utilities have substantially improved over the past few years, specialists stress there is a lot to be done and lay the blame on the electric companies.

Ever since the main electric utilities were privatized during the neoliberal governments, the country has undergone a major crisis in the energy sector. While urging the companies to increase their investments in power generation and distribution, the government has warned it could adopt far-reaching measures to address this countrywide problem.

Earlier this week the main power companies reported unprecedented millionaire loses at the stock exchange and the shareholders said the operations in the country are unsustainable. Experts said a rate hike up to 800% is necessary to make the business profitable but with a rampant inflation is yet to be seen if the government will give the green light to such unpopular move.

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