The MAS governments, with Evo and Luis Arce, in addition to imposing a rancid and bankrupt ideology, are doing terrible business, which entails astronomical losses for their deified state.
This is evident in the energy sector. As the stones in Bolivia also know, we import 50% of the petrol we consume at a high price and we resell it cheaply, through a subsidy; while the other 50% is remunerated to producers at half the international price. This “business” of buying high and selling low explains the foreign exchange deficit and the collapse of the hydrocarbon sector, while inflation continues to rise, belying the government’s excuses for not eliminating the subsidy.
Not only that, but we also sell cheap to buy at a high price. In fact, the foreign currency from gas exports to Brazil is not enough to buy the fuels we consume. Well, it is legitimate to ask whether it is a good business to continue to export gas to finance petrol imports.
Gas and gasoline are, after all, energy, which is the food of the economy: when chicken is scarce, it is replaced with beef or fish. Given the shortage of liquid fuels, it would seem logical to reduce demand by replacing them with other fuels. However, the government does exactly the opposite, when it chooses to resort to expensive patches, such as agrofuels, instead of promoting real solutions.
For long time, we have been insisting on two structural solutions to the shortage of liquid fuels. The first is in the medium and long term: decisively promoting the energy transition, one of the pillars of which is electromobility. It is not just a matter of reducing or eliminating customs tariffs, but of building an entire financial, technical, infrastructural and legal program that gives the user the security of replacing their petrol car with an electric one, taking advantage of the solar and water sources, abundant in our country.
The other structural solution, in the short and medium term, is to convert as many cars as possible to natural gas vehicles (NGV). The vicious business of exporting gas to buy petrol must become the virtuous business of reducing the import of petrol, thanks to gas.
In numerical terms, one cubic meter of gas (mc) is approximately equivalent in energy to one liter of gasoline, but exporting one cubic meter of gas brings us 0.25 dollars gross, at the price of 6.5 dollars/MMBtu that Brazil currently pays, while importing a liter of gasoline costs us four times more! This is the terrible deal of the state-owned company YPFB, although there are suspicions that this deal is not so bad for some of its executives and sponsors.
Therefore, the immediate solution is to reduce the export of gas to convert as many cars as possible to methane, starting with public transport, so as not to affect the economy of those who use it most. The million-dollar question is, how to do it?
It is time to put aside arid statism and promote the same conceptual change of authorizing the free import of fuels and facilitating investment and private entrepreneurial vision, guaranteeing the supply of NGV with incentives.
There are already feasible business models to convert thousands of cars to CNG, with creative financing mechanisms. The result will be substantial savings in foreign currency, the “painless” abolition of the subsidy and a cutting of the nails of those who have been (and continue) to enrich themselves with the fuel crisis.
Finally, the interesting thing about these business models is that they work even if the gas were to be imported, a possibility not so far off if the current energy policy is maintained.