The Competition and Market Authority has started an investigative procedure against Enel Energia to ascertain any incorrect commercial practice regarding the methods of communicating renewals. The information on the start of the investigation is published in the Authority’s bulletin, which highlights the “high number of requests for intervention received”. «The whistleblowers represent, in addition to the difficulty of sustaining disbursements quadrupled or quintupled compared to the past, that they have not received any prior information» on the contractual renewal and «that they have therefore not been able to exercise the right of withdrawal».
The Antitrust makes it known that since last January it has received «numerous and continuous complaints (over 600) from individual consumers and micro-enterprises, also through consumer associations, who complain of having received, during the relevant billing cycles for the four-month period October 2023 – January 2024, bills showing a significant increase in the price of gas and electricity supplies compared to bills referring to the same time period in the previous year”. In particular, «the whistleblowers represent, in addition to the difficulty of sustaining disbursements quadrupled or quintupled compared to the past, that they have not received any prior information in written form (via e-mail or paper), from Enel Energia, regarding the contractual renewal and that I was therefore unable to exercise the right of withdrawal or choose a different energy supplier”. «Some users – we read in the bulletin – report that they regularly receive invoices via email (or on the app), but that they have not received any communication of renewal of the economic conditions through the aforementioned channels and that they have accidentally found an email in spam, from Enel Energia, to which the communication of renewal, following expiry, of the economic conditions of supply was attached”.
«In the opinion of the whistleblowers – continues the Antitrust -, the email in question would have been “artfully packaged to be intercepted by the anti-spam filter” also due to the relevance of the graphic part; the same, in truth, lent itself to being interpreted as a mere promotional message and not as a document having a significant impact on the supply contract, also taken into account neither in the header nor in the textual part of said email was its object highlighted (i.e. the modification of the economic conditions)” .
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The Demolition of Charles EL Brown’s Villa: A Loss for Swiss Architecture
Gerald Brandstätter, Áras NZZ
Published on April 22, 2024 at 7:58 pm
It was the time of the Glorious Thirties and the industrial boom. In 1958, Brown, Boveri & Cie (BBC), which later became ABB, and then Alstom, built four office buildings on Römerstrasse, a street that leads directly from the bath area to the industrial zone where the BBC was located in 1891. For the construction of these new buildings, it was necessary to demolish the villa of Charles EL Brown, one of the founders of the company. This demolition also resulted in the loss of one of the main works of the architects Curjel and Moser, who also designed the old building of the Kunsthaus Zurich and the main building of the University of Zurich.
Openness and light
The Demolition of Charles EL Brown’s Villa: A Loss for Swiss Architecture
The IMF calls for controlling public spending
– 2024-04-22 20:05:50
He International Monetary Fund (IMF) This Wednesday he called on governments to control public spending to preserve the soundness of finances and not to follow a trend that usually occurs in election years: spend more and tax less.
“History and empirical evidence show that governments tend to spend more and tax less during election years” and 2024 is a “particularly challenging” year, with dozens of elections affecting more than half of the world’s population, he explained. to EFE in an interview the director of the Fund’s Department of Budgetary Affairs, Victor Gaspar.
The IMF today published the latest data from its fiscal monitor and calculated that in 2024 there will be a fiscal adjustment again and the world deficit will close the year at 4.9% of GDP, compared to the 5.5% it registered at the end of 2023. .
However, medium-term fiscal consolidation is expected to remain modest, with the overall deficit expected to stabilize at 4.3% of GDP by 2029, around 0.7 percentage points higher than in 2019.
As for global debt, it is expected to close at 93.8% of GDP this year and continue to rise to close to 100% of GDP by 2029 (98.8%), an increase led by some large economies such as China, Italia y USAwhich need to adopt measures “urgently” to address imbalances between spending and income, the Fund notes in its report.
The IMF presented the fiscal monitor within the framework of the spring meetings it is holding these days in Washington together with the world Bank and that they are bringing together the main economic authorities in the world.
The forecasted data, the Fund points out, could worsen due to the particular situation experienced this year, when a record number of countries, where more than half of the world’s population lives, will hold national elections.
History shows that governments tend to spend more and tax less during election years, and according to the IMF, deficits in these periods tend to exceed forecasts by 0.4 percentage points of GDP, compared to non-election years.
«Political discourse predominantly reflects calls for public spending, fiscal support and fiscal expansion. These political circumstances are accompanied by economic and financial demands derived from high, uncertain and volatile interest rates, and a slowdown in medium-term growth prospects.Gaspar pointed out.
Therefore, it is essential that governments “avoid deviations and focus on rebuilding reserves and safeguarding fiscal sustainability in the medium term,” he stated.
Although the global economic and financial outlook has improved over the past six months, inflation has fallen and financial conditions have eased, the IMF notes in the report, many countries “continue to struggle with high public debt.”
Thus, the modest fiscal adjustment that the Fund forecasts in the medium term (a deficit of 4.3% in 2029) is “insufficient to stabilize public debt in many countries.”
Under current policies, primary deficits (excluding interest expenditures) will remain above debt stabilization levels in 2029 in about a third of advanced and emerging market economies and in almost a quarter of low-income developing countries.
The size of additional adjustments needed varies, the Fund notes, and is “particularly large” for emerging markets with rising public debt-to-GDP ratios. EFE (I)
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The IMF calls for controlling public spending – 2024-04-22 20:05:50