Housing and communal services transferred to the presidential tariff?
Early calculated, polled early
In the coming days, many of us will be very unpleasantly surprised to learn new payments for utilities services. They promised, as it is in Russia, and it is accepted that it will rise in price a little and not much, but in the end, most likely, everything will be different. Almost everything will go up in price, and almost everything will grow much.
But the most offensive is not even that. Too much will go up at all in a different way than was planned for July 1. Counting or, if you will, deception, will happen simply after the fact, when something can be changed only through a court. Of course, not all will be counted and deceived, but many, most likely, even very many. And then they could even return something to someone, but now they returned four and a half million for all in Zelenograd ... All residents of seven houses, where 460 took extra rubles for heating from every month.
However, even if someone gets returned and more, the unpleasant aftertaste will not go anywhere. And after the first of August, surely, reports of services that study public opinion will not be so benign. After all, literally on the eve of a real, rather than paper, increase in utility tariffs, the vast majority of Russians, or rather, 81% surveyed by the Romir holding, rated the utilities system in their area of residence positively.
Citizens were asked not only about the general state of the public utilities system, but also about the existing problems. As a result, 76% of Russians simply considered a good service of housing and public utilities, and 5% of respondents considered very good only of all. Negatively estimated the housing and utilities system of all 15% of respondents, and only 4% of Russians critically rated it.
A positive result was obtained only because in Romir they asked about tariffs just when they had not yet grown. But in the course of the survey, the payments were such that there were no problems with payment, only for 8% of Russians. Nearly half of the respondents, 42%, already considered tariffs high, and almost a quarter (23%) - very heavy. Compared to the 2013 and 2016 surveys, the data are better, but what will they be after 1 August?
It is not by chance that literally the other day, either in order to avoid the coming mass protest, or already under the impression of opposition rallies, although in a completely different matter, the authorities decided to act in advance. President Vladimir Putin urgently called in for an interview the head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service, Igor Artemyev, to figure out why the increase in utility tariffs in many regions of Russia suddenly turned out to be "unreasonable."
Although what could be the advance, if the increased tariffs began to act here as early as a month ago? And the head of state did not invent the term about the “unreasonable” growth of tariffs, but borrowed it from outraged citizens. From among those who succeeded or were allowed to reach the GDP itself via a “straight line”.
Tariff does not have a retroactive effect?
The trial, according to media reports and comments, the interview with Igor Artemyev at the head of state turned out to be quite constructive. Our goals are clear, the goals are set. But for whom there will be a victory, it is not entirely clear. Apparently, not for citizens, but for public utilities. Some of them will be scolded, someone will even be planted for the purpose. And that only for the fact that "they are not according to the rank."
“I would very much like words and pieces of paper that are produced in large quantities at different levels, not to disagree with the essence of the decisions that are made; that people see that these decisions work in real life,” said the head of state.
Putin not only reminded Artemyev of citizens' complaints during the presidential direct line on the unreasonable, in their opinion, increase in tariffs. He at the same time remembered about 12 holes in the legislation used by public utilities in the field.
In response, the head of the FAS reported that he counted hundreds of cases of using those very 12 holes. And he reminded the president that for many years now the government has not set tariffs in Russia on the "inflation-minus" principle. Not quite clear, but it seems people have to pay less and less. However, for some reason it turns out more and more.
We will not argue that from the interview of the president with the head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service the conclusion suggests itself: in August, housing and utilities tariffs simply will not be allowed to jump. Especially since those “12 holes” are already closed. It also issued a cabinet decree that prohibits tariffs from being made higher than what is set by the government. However, citizens still continue to overpay for housing and communal services at times of very dubious quality.
And further, it seems, everything will go as before. Tariffs will rise again: due to inflation, due to the increase in VAT, due to sanctions, but primarily due to the fact that someone somewhere out of money again. Here are just going to infinity on the ridge of a simple public will not succeed. It is possible once again, another, maybe even the third, to pretend that the situation is under control, and the utility industry is about to become a sort of locomotive of the economy. But somehow it is bad to believe in this.
And the very fact that Putin and Artemyev decided to check the clock just now, makes a heavy, I would say, depressing impression. Really, in the month that passed after the official and widespread increase in tariffs, no one was able to monitor, and then to provide the head of the FAS and the president of the country with comprehensive information about who and where he messed up with the indexation of prices? But at the same time submit at least an approximate data on where people are generally taken not according to tariffs, but as local public utilities want?
Reform as a business project
The fact that the prices of utilities should be raised and they will be raised, we were told for a long time, but did not say when they froze at least for a while. You can still understand when the finances and the ruble exchange rate are not all right, but now this is the case, as they say, there is no place better. The Central Bank began to cut rates, mortgages are getting cheaper, bankers are panicking that they will soon have to lend to the public at a loss.
Now Igor Artemyev had the courage to say that story 20-year-old with a permanent increase in utility tariffs is finally completed. Most likely, he seriously hoped that the president would give the go-ahead to the long-awaited termination of the creeping growth of utility tariffs. However, the head of state did not give such a go-ahead and even objected: "Not really, if it had been completed, people would not have complained about this on a straight line."
But all the imaginable and unimaginable price milestones, which were once called necessary in order to ensure the self-sufficiency of the industry, have been achieved. And achieved more than once. And let the official Moscow press not try to convince us that Moscow still has almost the lowest prices for housing and utilities services among world capitals. And even if it leads to the substantiation of its conclusions, it seems to be quite convincing graphics.
An inquisitive reader will immediately understand that the recalculation here goes on square meters, and not on rubles or euros in the wages of an ordinary Muscovite or Berliner. That's just the average salary of an average Berliner at least three or four times higher than that of an average Muscovite. We will not argue that at the same time it has for some reason more square meters of housing. But besides, the level of services rendered by the Berlin or London utilities is, to put it mildly, slightly better than in the capital, which is prosperous by Russian standards.
In an attempt to somehow justify the utter growth of tariffs, Russians like to be reminded that they owe 4,4 trillion rubles for housing and communal services. And these are only those debts for which they managed to make a court decision on recovery. It is easy to read that each of us, it turns out, did not seem to have paid public utilities almost 100 thousand. It’s good that rubles, not dollars.
Why no one thinks how much we, the Russians, are indebted to our public utilities? For leaks and rolling blackouts, for delays in the supply of water after switching off, and always uncleaned garbage. Why, in general, no one wants to consider where billions and trillions have gone, directed over many years to reform the industry? Again, not enough, or again someone stole something?
There is clearly time to do the analysis of debris, and the Chamber of Accounts, and the Prosecutor General's Office with the Investigative Committee. Simple control by antimonopolschikov is not enough. The readers, I hope, have not forgotten that, not too long ago, about pensions, they were also told something painfully similar to what now justifies the growth of utility tariffs. However, the Russians have swallowed years of free living without a pension earned, so why not do something similar in the housing and utilities sector?
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