Comparative analysis on the economic sustainability of the social rate for basic sanitation in Sousa-PB, 2021

: The present work addresses the new tariff policy implemented in the Municipality of Sousa-PB, which, in the execution of environmental sanitation services, through a municipal authority, the Department of Water Sewage and Environmental Sanitation (DAESA) adopted a social tariff policy for tax exemption . The general objective is to analyze the economic feasibility and sustainability of the tariff policy adopted in January 2021 by DAESA. The specific objectives of the work are: to carry out a documental survey on national and local legislation about the institution of social tariffs in environmental sanitation services; analyze the temporal evolution of tariffs applied in Sousa-PB by DAESA and, finally; to prepare a comparative study between the tariff structure proposed by Assis, Vieira and Oliveira in 2018, seeking to achieve the financial balance of the autarchy and the current tariff structure adopted in 2021. To do so, it uses the deductive approach method and the procedure method comparative in the construction of a documentary, bibliographic, applied and quali-quantitative research. Coming to the conclusion of the explicit economic unsustainability of the present social tariff policy, mainly considering that the bill at national level tends to adopt the social tariff policy by reduction, and not by exemption as in the case found in the municipality of Sousa-PB.


INTRODUCTION
Access to water and basic sanitation are fundamental rights recognized by the United Nations Organization (UNO) and are part of the environmental sanitation services regulated by Law No. 11. 445/2007. This law establishes the National Policy of Basic Sanitation, which has as one of its fundamental principles the economic sustainability of sanitation services through tariffs.
However, if there is a social need to guarantee the right to water to the poor, the providers of this public service are allowed to create social tariffs by means of exemption or reduction of the tariff to be paid.
The municipality of Sousa, in the Sertão Paraibano, provides the environmental sanitation service indirectly, through a municipal autarchy, the Department of Water, Sewage and Environmental Sanitation (DAESA), and applies the social tariff in the exemption mode.
This paper aims to verify the feasibility of maintaining the model of social tariff by exemption adopted and maintained by the autarchy, in view of previous works that have addressed the issue and the progress of a federal bill that aims to establish a social tariff on environmental sanitation services by reduction.
The specific objectives of the work are to conduct a documentary survey of the national, state and local legal provisions on the social tariff in environmental sanitation services, to analyze the temporal evolution of the tariffs applied in Sousa-PB by DAESA and, finally, to prepare a comparative study between the tariff structure proposed to achieve the financial balance of the municipality and the tariff structure most recently adopted.
The research is relevant because it has direct application in the daily life of the Sousense community, aiming to analyze the financial and legal feasibility of the implemented social tariff policy.

Historical-legal analysis of the pricing policy for environmental sanitation services
The fundamental right to access to water and the pricing of its services Access to drinking water is recognized as a human right essential to life and is directly linked to the principle of human dignity, the latter being one of the founding principles of our legal system. In 2010 the United Nations Organization (UNO), consolidated the access to drinking water as a universal right by approving the resolution A/RES/64/292 "the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right essential for the full enjoyment of life of all human rights" (REIS, 2021, p. 124). The principles applicable to the human right to water and sanitation are equivalent to those applied to other human rights, but also have some points unique to them, such as availability, which refers to the continuous supply and sufficient quality to meet the basic needs of each consumer; quality, which refers to wholesomeness without the presence of microorganisms or harmful substances, as well as acceptable color, smell, and taste. Finally, the two main characteristics: "Accessibility" and "Non-discrimination and transparency", both deal with the need for drinking water to be affordable, either with regard to access to the service or to facilities within the physical reach of all sectors of the population, as well as the need for special treatment directed to the most vulnerable and marginalized populations. (ALBUQUERQUE, 2014).
On this bias, it is worth noting that in Brazil, in addition to the right to access to drinking water is established in art. 5 of its Federal Constitution, which presents in its caput, that everyone, whether Brazilians or foreigners residing in the country has the right to life -this being impossible without access to water. The Law of Strike and the Consumer Defense Code (Laws no. 7.783/19897.783/ (BRASIL, 1989 and no. 8.078/19908.078/ (BRASIL, 1990, respectively, give the water supply the status of an essential service, making it, therefore, a service that cannot be interrupted.
However, despite all these laws that ensure the access to water, both internationally and nationally, companies that work with the distribution of this essential good are still allowed to suspend the service in case of consumer default. This is protected by the Brazilian legal system, which expresses it in Law 8.987/1995, in its article 6, §3, II: Every concession or permission presupposes the provision of service adequate to the full service of users, as established in this Law, in the pertinent norms and in the respective contract. §A service interruption in an emergency situation or after previous notice is not characterized as a discontinuity of service, when II -by default of the user, considering the interest of the collectivity.
Note that the right to drinking water is more important than the economic value earned by the work, but in a logical line of reasoning, it becomes unfeasible the coercion by the State to force the concessionaire to perform its services for free.
The fact is that Law No. 11.445/2007, which establishes the National Policy of Basic Sanitation, in its articles 11, IV, a and 11-A, § 3, states that in order to ensure efficiency and economic sustainability, public services of basic sanitation must be paid by consumers through a modest tariff.
The doctrinal divergence is expressed, and in the midst of this legal and social conflict, Senate Bill No. 9.543/18 arises, which presents the creation of a social tariff as an effective response to the problem. The Social Tariff adopts cross-subsidies for different categories of users, providing the idea of social justice, that is, those who earn more pay a little more, subsidizing those who earn less and are in a momentary situation of social vulnerability, it is an instrument created to reduce this social inequality, providing the universalization of drinking water supply, respecting the principles of accessibility and nondiscrimination and transparency mentioned above.
It also establishes a coherence between the laws of our legal system, respecting both the right of the private supplier and the right of the consumer and citizen to have their essential right respected. The bill benefits families with incomes of up to half a minimum wage per person, and the rate reduction is staggered.
With a monthly consumption of up to 10 cubic meters (m³), the discount will be 40%; in the range of 10 to 15 m³, 30%; and, finally, from 15 to 20 m³, 20%. If there is a consumption greater than the portions presented there will be no discount (AGÊNCIA CÂMARA DE NOTÍCIAS, 2019).

The Finance and Taxation Committee of the House of Representatives approved the bill on
Wednesday, August 4, 2021. By changing the initial proposal, with the exclusion of the 20% discount for consumption between 15 and 20 m³, it was alleged that such discount would be an incentive for the inefficient use of water, leaving only the 40% discount at the limit of 10 m³ per month, taking into account It is also important to emphasize that the social tariff will be applied only to one consumer unit per family. When requested and provided it is technically possible, the service providers must install water meters for each family living in regular or irregular multi-family dwellings (AGÊNCIA CÂMARA DE NOTÍCIAS, 2021).
In general, the companies that provide water supply services in Brazil, whether they are public or private, offer the social tariff, mostly aimed at the low-income population. However, the number and nature of the requirements imposed for users to be eligible to receive this benefit go beyond the (low) income criterion, and start demanding additional requirements, resulting in an exclusionary character for an instrument that should be inclusive (AGUIAR; MORETTI; SILVA, 2020). The social tariff policy adopted by DAESA Law 14.026/2020 changes the National Policy for Basic Sanitation (PNSB-Law 11.445/2007) in many points, so that now, besides the remuneration by charging for the services, art. 29 of PNSB points out the possibility of ensuring the economic and financial sustainability of public basic sanitation services through additional forms of revenue collection, such as subsidies and grants. Paragraph 1 of the aforementioned article also lists the guidelines for charging for public basic sanitation services: § 1o Subject to the provisions in items I to III of the caption sentence of this article, the establishment of tariffs, public prices and fees for basic sanitation services will observe the following guidelines: I -priority for serving the essential functions related to public health; II -expansion of the access to services to low-income citizens and localities; III -generation of the necessary resources to make investments, aiming at the fulfillment of the goals and objectives of the service; IV -inhibition of superfluous consumption and waste of resources; V -recovery of the costs incurred in the rendering of the service, under an efficiency regime; VI -adequate remuneration of the capital invested by the service providers; VII -stimulus to use modern and efficient technologies, compatible with the required levels of quality, continuity and safety in the rendering of services; VIII -incentive for the efficiency of the service providers.
In addition, §2 establishes the possibility of adopting "tariff and non-tariff subsidies for users that do not have sufficient payment capacity to cover the full cost of the services". Thus, one can see the ability of the public service provider to institute a social tariff policy. Moreover, item VI of art. 30 of the PNSB also says that the remuneration and charging structure for the services mentioned here must take into consideration the payment capacity of the consumers.
Article 31 speaks expressly of low-income users: Art. 31 -The subsidies destined to attend determined low-income users will be, depending on the origin of the resources: (Redrafted by Law No. 14,026, of 2020) I -(revoked); (Text was reworded by Law 14,026, dated 2020) II -tariffs, when they are part of the tariff structure, or fiscal, when they result from the allocation of budget resources, including by means of subsidies; and III -internal to each holder or between holders, in the hypotheses of regionalized provision.
Article 37 of the same law states that tariff adjustments must be made respecting a minimum interval of 12 months. In Article 38 the modalities of tariff revision are listed, namely; periodic, which are based on the re-evaluation of the market, and extraordinary. This is when facts not foreseen in the contract that alter its economic-financial balance are verified. It is established that the readjustments and revisions must be made public at least 30 days in advance. It must be emphasized, finally, that article 40 of the PNSB, in its §3º establishes that: § 3º The interruption or restriction of the supply of water due to default to health establishments, educational institutions and collective housing institutions and to low-income residential users who are beneficiaries of the social tariff must comply with the deadlines and criteria that preserve the minimum conditions for maintaining the health of the people affected.
At first, according to Oliveira (2015), DAESA had instituted its tariff policy in 2009, and only came to readjust it in 2021.     social tariffs can be set, through reduction or exemption, but within the possible and necessary. Thus, Oliveira (2015) argues that, in the midst of the financial difficulties diagnosed in the survey, it would be unfeasible that the social tariff be given by exemption. This thought is consistent with art. 18 of the same law, which establishes that a minimum monthly price should be set to be charged, even if consumption does not reach this limit.

TABLE 2:
Comparison between the rebalancing model and the adopted adjustment. It is worth noting that, according to the model proposed by Assis, Vieira, and Oliveira (2018), the social tariff would not occur by exemption, but rather by reduction. Thus, one can conclude the financial unsustainability of the mentioned autarchy, whose legal regime demands financial and administrative autonomy, which is not in accordance with art. 2, VII of PNSB, which establishes that financial sustainability is one of the fundamental principles of basic sanitation services.

METHODOLOGY
Prodanov and Freitas (2013, p. 24) define the scientific method as a "set of procedures adopted for the purpose of attaining knowledge." It is the methods that enable the researcher to determine the scope of his investigation and the validity of his generalizations.
In this way, the present work uses the deductive approach method, starting from general doctrinal and social explanations about basic sanitation and its pricing, and proceeding to the analysis of the evolution of the reality of Sousa-PB, through data collected in other researches and those primarily made available by the competent official bodies. Thus, it is used a logical construction between two premises to extract a third premise logically arising from the first two (PRODANOV; FREITAS, 2013).
As methods of procedure, the comparative method is used, when one compares the data published by the updated official agencies with the previous ones and with the fruits of other researches.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
It results from the research that the national trend is to adopt a model of social tariff by reduction, in view of the need to obey the principle of efficiency, and the principle of economic sustainability through the tariffs charged for environmental sanitation services, as can be seen in the bill approved in the due parliamentary commission.
It is noted that the tariff adjustment adopted in Sousa-PB in 2021 is below what is necessary to ensure the economic and financial balance required by the National Environmental Sanitation Policy and the nature of DAESA as a municipal autarchy. It also shows the economic unsustainability of the social tariff by exemption, since even with a higher increase in the other ranges, the model for economic rebalancing requires a minimum tariff of R$ 28.90 for the residential consumption range of up to 10 m³.

CONCLUSIONS
The research shows that the Brazilian legislation, aiming to guarantee the fundamental right of access to water to the poor, tends to apply a national policy of social tariff reduction. In fact, although there is a need for efficiency and economic sustainability in public services of environmental sanitation, one cannot forget those who will be deprived of an essential service due to their inability to afford the tariff charged. Next, it is ascertained that the legislation of Sousa instituted a policy of social tariff exemption for the payment of public services of water supply and sewage collection. This tariff structure was implemented in 2009 and only revised in 2021.
The comparative study between the model proposed to achieve economic and financial balance in 2018 and the tariff structure adopted in January 2021 shows that it is not feasible to maintain the current model, so a new study is required to determine the model of increase needed to ensure DAESA's economic and financial balance. It is emphasized that the tariff increase in the other ranges is not the only solution.
It is recommended the adoption of the national model in progress, which is the social tariff by reduction, in addition, Law 11.445/2007 establishes that it is possible to have non-tariff subsidies, such as grants and subsidies. All the research objectives have been achieved.