Gas consumes 22% of the budget of basic services of the poorest

Expenses with cooking gas sold in 13 kg cylinders commit 22% of the domestic budget allocated to public services for the poorest families in Brazil, which includes electricity, water, sewage, telephone and taxes. For the richest, the share is 13%.

This is what the study carried out by the consultancy Kantar says in 4,915 households in 2021, when it was still not possible to feel the effects of the mega-increase promoted by Petrobras in fuels. According to the survey, the rise in gas prices is especially critical among the lower classes.

The Kantar study also shows that, between 2020 and 2021, the share of the budget spent on cooking gas increased by 25% for families in classes D and E. In classes A and B, the same expense increased by 16%.

For the poorest, the cost of gas is the second largest expense in services, tied with water and sewage and only behind electricity, which, in 2021, corresponded to 51% of the budget for services in these classes.

The study also shows that, when all social classes are considered, gas occupies the third place in the budget of basic services for families, losing to water and electricity. However, between 2020 and 2021, all classes saw their share of costing with the input grow.

Families improvise stove

Although the increase is widespread, the price impacts are felt differently among families, especially in the periphery, where lower-income households are. With difficulty buying food, using bottled gas in cooking often becomes unfeasible.

This is the case of elderly caretaker Fernanda Pinheiro, 34, who today cooks for her family with food she receives from donations, burning wood she finds on the street in an improvised wood stove. A resident of the Parque Santo Antônio neighborhood, in the south of São Paulo, she says that, for about a year and a half, most of her neighbors have not been able to buy gas either.

Before that, Fernanda had never needed to use firewood for cooking — at most, to heat bath water in her childhood, a practice that the family later abandoned after losing part of the house in a fire caused by power failures.

Since 2021, however, the practice has returned. Sometimes, she uses a crockpot that she received as a donation, but this is not always possible. “I’m going to prepare the food on the wood stove, because the gas money will be left over to buy something else, a pack of diapers or sanitary pads”, he says.

Teacher organizes crowdfunding to donate gas

Since 2020, geography teacher from São Paulo’s municipal network Alessandro Rubens has been organizing Periferia e Solidariedade, a project for donating groceries to low-income families. He says that, during this period, he saw an increase in reports of fires in communities and urban occupations.

“In the favela, the wood stove implies increasing risks”, says the professor. “Usually they [os moradores] cement blocks are placed and many burst, and the risk of accidents is very high.” Last year, the group mobilized funds to buy medicine for a person who was burned in such an accident.

The project donates basic food baskets, meals and hygiene products on a routine basis, and Rubens tells how the demand for gas is enormous and impossible to meet. Therefore, the crowdfunding for donations of gas cylinders is directed to mothers with more than one child. “Inside the house, with more than one child, it is very dangerous to cook [de forma improvisada]”, he justifies.

Mom takes turns to save

Production assistant Samantha Silva, 33, takes turns preparing food between an electric stove and a wood stove, which is communal and improvised, built by a neighbor. Sometimes, she also cooks on the barbecue in her mother’s backyard, also made by the family.

She says that, with the relay, she manages to save as much gas as possible to feed her two daughters, aged 10 and 15. Samantha also uses an electric stove when she can and says that it is difficult to adapt the cooking time to the direct contact of the pan with the fire.

For three months, the production assistant has been living in an irregular occupation, because, without income, she has a dilemma: “Either you pay the rent or you buy the gas, or the food”. Beneficiary of Auxílio Brasil, she received a gas voucher worth R$ 52, but ended up using the money to buy food.

Gas inflation is almost four times the official rate

Data from the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) show that cooking gas inflation in 2021 was 36.99%, well above the general index of official inflation, the IPCA (National Broad Consumer Price Index), which closed the year at 10.06%.

Today, in the city of São Paulo, 13 kg cylinders are sold for up to R$ 150 and more than half of the sales are in installments on credit, according to data from Sergás (Sindicato das Empresas Resendedoras de Gás, in Greater São Paulo). While improvised stoves are multiplying in communities, dealers see sales fall, on average, by 20%.

Sergás President Robson Carneiro dos Santos says that cooking gas is the best option for cooking around the world, as it does not put health at risk. In addition to accidents, the burning of other materials such as wood and alcohol releases gases and toxic particles into the lungs, which can cause COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

In order to maintain itself, the sector has tried not to pass on the full percentage of readjustment to customers, which caused layoffs in companies in the area. In the last year, to pay the 10% salary increase of resellers’ employees without increasing the final value of the cylinder, companies saw a 30% increase in layoffs.

“We were not able to pass on this increase, the price of gas remained the same”, he says. “The resale absorbed this expense, the consumer can no longer. It is already very difficult to pay.”

Manicure uses sister’s cylinder when gas runs out

Elma Soares, 35, resident of the northern region of Belo Horizonte, says that, in recent times, she has been taking money from supermarket purchases to buy gas. Mother of three children, aged 4, 12 and 14, she claims that before she barely accounted for the price of gas in the household budget.

“If I were a single person, without children, without anything, I would manage anyway. But when you have three children at home, how do you not manage to buy gas?”, he says.

When they don’t have money, Elma and her sister, who is a neighbor, share a cylinder until they can buy the next one. “Before, as it was a lower value, sometimes I would resort to someone who would lend money or ‘borrow’ the gas: ‘you buy it and then return it to me’. But, with this value, it’s not with all the people in my cycle I can do it”, he says.

Gas voucher is not enough

The economist at FGV/Ibre (Brazilian Institute of Economics), André Braz, explains that “it is natural that when an energy [o gás] becomes expensive, the consumption of firewood increases.” And the trend, according to him, is for the price of gas to continue on the rise.

Braz believes that the value is unlikely to decrease while sanctions on Russia, the world’s second largest oil producer, last.

To try to reduce the impacts of the cost of gas on families in 2021, after successive adjustments by Petrobras, Congress approved a project by Deputy Carlos Zarattini (PT-SP), which provides for the distribution of a voucher worth 50% of the average price. of the 13 kg cylinder in the last six months, according to a survey by the ANP (National Agency for Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels).

The Auxílio Gás program started to pay, in December, the amount to families that are part of CadÚnico (Single Registry). The last remittance, in February, transferred BRL 279 million to 5.5 million families, in vouchers worth BRL 50.

In São Paulo, the state government’s Vale Gás program will distribute, this year, R$ 256.1 million in bimonthly vouchers of R$ 100 to families in situations of social vulnerability. In February, 32.2 million people were granted the benefit.

Petrobras, on the other hand, foresees a budget of R$ 270 million to reduce the impacts of rising prices on low-income families. The company makes donations of aid for the purchase of gas to the communities in the surroundings where it operates, in addition to allocating gas donations across the country to institutions that carry out food collection and that provide food for homeless people in large centers urban.

For Braz, however, the measures are palliative, because the price of fuel may continue to rise, and inflation may continue reducing the purchasing power of consumers. “You have a lot of parallel problems that are undermining the budget of the less fortunate,” he says.