According to the analysis in the consultant’s latest report, there is currently no “integrated planning with other agents (municipalities, PMGDs, urban planning centers) and limited attention to operational improvements”.
Systep raises the need to change distribution pricing to improve service quality
The need for the distribution segment to have an “appropriate form of pricing that allows generating incentives for improvements in the quality of the services provided, considering the current technological changes, promoting efficiency and innovation”, stated the consulting firm Systep in its latest monthly report.
According to the consultant’s analysis, a change in the pricing of the sector could avoid “problems such as those that occurred during the last storms, adapting the technologies to act more quickly and increase the reliability of the networks in the face of unexpected phenomena”, which is why it was indicated that the current discussion on the Distribution Law led by the CNE and the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, “could be a great opportunity to incorporate this type of incentive”.
Current framework.
According to Systep, current distribution regulation “passes on to consumers the cost of an efficient network, but there is a lack of integrated planning with other agents (municipalities, PMGDs, urban planning centers) and limited attention to operational improvements”.
For this reason, it was stated that the current regulation “is not flexible enough for distributors or other agents to develop solutions to improve quality and that they are adequately remunerated. In addition, investments are developed with very unequal urban standards in the country, with some areas of high impact on the citizens and without greater coordination or information to them”.
The analysis also pointed out that the current regulation, which sets the charges of each concessionary company, “must be improved in several relevant aspects”, specifically to improve distribution networks through greater automation and undergrounding of networks, and therefore other investment incentives for companies operating in the sector are required.
