The Government eliminated the 30% surcharge on the use of CNG in buses and reignited the war over subsidies

A bus that travels back and forth across the metropolitan area receives, on average, about $12 million in subsidies per month. That's a little over $400,000 per day, which should be multiplied by the system's 16,700 units. That way the bill climbs to around $208 billion monthly. Anyone who wants to understand why the bus owners ended up denouncing each other in Comodoro Py has to start with that number. On Friday, Resolution 83 from the Transport Secretariat landed on that pot of money, touching nothing more and nothing less than a bonus: an extra 30% in the fare used to calculate the subsidy for anyone putting a compressed natural gas (CNG) bus on the street. Taken to the average, that premium equals about $3.6 million more per month per unit. So far, an incentive like any other. The problem is that the money to be distributed is a fixed number. If the one who buys a gas-powered bus gets more, the one who stays with diesel gets less. There is no other window. That is the heart of a conflict that began as a dispute over spreadsheets and ended with businessmen accusing each other of fraud. From now on, the fixed bonus disappears for national lines, those whose routes touch the City of Buenos Aires and reach the suburbs. In total, the measure affects 6,855 buses, according to data from the cost structure that the government itself approved in October. And here comes the first surprise: of that total, only 33 run on CNG and 3 are electric. The fight, then, is not over the buses already on the road but over those that were going to be bought. Metropol's CNG buses, at the center of the controversy. Hernán Zenteno One point to clarify is that in the metropolitan area (AMBA) three jurisdictions coexist: the Nation, the City, and the province of Buenos Aires. The Buenos Aires city administration was the one that led the way with a rule in force in that territory that granted that bonus. The Metropol Group was the one that got ahead, with the purchase of 150 buses imported as "temporary." Once they were on the street, it began collecting that extra money, and that situation triggered the fight. As noted, what the "CNG pioneers" collected was subtracted from the rest. Which meant, the other lines said, that the road ahead was the impoverishment of the transport "middle class," as the companies (about 50% of the fleet) that belong neither to Metropol nor to DOTA, the other giant of the sector, with around 40% of the total buses in the AMBA, are called. Shortly after, when architect Fernando Herrmann's administration arrived at the national level, first at Transport and now at the Infrastructure Coordination Secretariat, it copied that Buenos Aires city scheme. That is what has now been changed, not what the City and the Buenos Aires provincial government wrote. The national 30% bonus had been born in January and was ratified in May. The new rule, signed by Mariano Plencovich and applying to October's settlement, a month already past, replaces it with something else: a theoretical fare by energy type, built according to what each technology's kilometer costs. In other words, the State stops rewarding and starts recognizing the cost difference. The Infrastructure Coordination Secretary, Fernando Herrmann. How much is that? The official figure has not been published. At AAETA, the chamber that includes Metropol and the most critical of the measure, they did the math with the official spreadsheets: gas costs between 6% and 14% more per kilometer, depending on the group of lines. If the recognition goes along those lines, the bonus would be less than half. The entity adds that companies that had committed gas-powered units for national routes halted the purchases. There is fine print. The Secretariat reserves the power to recalculate those parameters whenever it sees fit and to set a different fare for each line. A percentage written into a rule became a value defined in an office. It is the second time this year that the scheme has been modified. The iron behind the fight In this case file, gas is not an environmental matter. When four chambers accused La Nueva Metropol of inflating tickets, the Zbikoski group responded that it was all payback for having closed the purchase of 150 Chinese King Long CNG buses. Those who did not want a new player, they said, were the historic manufacturers. The fleet numbers help understand the argument. Between the national and city lines, 8,924 units circulate: 4,537 are Mercedes-Benz and 3,803 are Agrale. Two brands take 93% of the market. The German one has several dealerships, but the most powerful is the Prieto Group and its dealership Colcar; the Agrale license belongs to DOTA, the largest group in the sector. On the same spreadsheet, King Long appears for the first time, with 149 buses. Metropol's Chinese buses, on line 65. It is not the first time gas has divided opinions. The same four chambers had already asked the province of Buenos Aires by letter to halt an identical bonus. The argument was the usual one: there is only one pie. The $12 million per bus does not appear in any official paper. It comes from a LA NACION calculation based on the Índice Bondi, AAETA's monthly dashboard. In September, the State recognized a cost of $361,692 million for the system. Passengers contributed, ticket by ticket, about $153,800 million, while the rest came from the public coffers. Since May, that pot has barely moved: it fluctuated between $200,000 and $210,000 million, although revenue did rise. Each unit collected $6.8 million per month in the SUBE machine and now collects $9.2 million. Translated: the passenger has been bearing the cost increases. Drop in SUBE card use due to other alternative payment methods. Ricardo Pristupluk On the national lines the picture is more delicate. Their minimum fare is stuck at $742.81, against $956.38 in the City and $1,276.08 in the province. The government chose not to touch the fare and to add more compensation. These are the buses that charge the least and depend most on what comes through the window. The new formula has a piece that decides a lot and explains little. It is called the Operativity Index and it multiplies what each line receives. What it measures and how much each variable weighs is not in the resolution: Transport defines it by instruction, without going through the Official Gazette. Among the criteria mentioned in passing are the use of clean technologies, such as electricity and gas. There are also controls that did not exist before. Kilometers can be deducted if a line adds route without adding passengers, there is a cap on how much each bus travels at rush hour, and a ceiling appears: no one will be able to charge above their costs plus a margin. At AAETA they warn that this limit may hit precisely the lines with the cleanest fleets. What was not touched is what is being disputed in the courts. Each line's subsidy revenue is still calculated by the number of tickets sold in each section, so that the long trip yields more than the short one. The Average Paid Distance, the indicator that originated the complaint, is not named in the annex. In the middle there are $6,500 million withheld, the equivalent of the monthly subsidy of about 520 buses. And two cases that cannot both be true, both on the desk of Judge Sebastián Casanello: one investigates whether there was a fraud with SUBE; the other, whether the chambers fabricated a false accusation to take a competitor's share. Prosecutor Guillermo Marijuan has already requested the indictment of the four presidents of the entities and former Transport Secretary Luis Pierrini. For now, Casanello has not granted it. The annexes of the new resolution came out of the Transport Subsidies Directorate, signed by Guillermo Laión. That office is within the organizational chart of the national directorate of Alejandro Seijas, the official who in July wrote that there was no harm to the State and in September endorsed cuts of $7,156 million. Two readings remain. Either the government took away a privilege from a handful of buses and began to order a system that no one seriously controlled for two decades, or it changed the rules just when a new player had bet on them. The answer lies in a number that is still unknown: how much, since October, is a passenger traveling on a bus that runs on compressed natural gas worth. By Diego Cabot