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The Argentine government and the Province of Buenos Aires have agreed to pay around 60 million pesos ($15.9 million) in debt owed to three major power distributors, company officials said Wednesday.

The debt is related to an agreement between the governments and the distributors - Edenor, Edesur and Edelap - to provide electricity to hundreds of thousands of people living in shantytowns in and around the City of Buenos Aires.

The agreement, which has been renewed periodically since 1994, aims to provide poor residents with access to subsidized power. But during Argentina's 2001-2002 economic crisis, the national and provincial governments began failing to meet their payment obligations to the companies.

Officials from the companies, who asked for anonymity, say the payment decision is positive.

"We shouldn't interpret this as an inflection point but neither should we dismiss it as insignificant," said one official.

An official at another distributor said the payment represents the "normalization of a legal agreement" while denying that it means the government is set to change its prickly relationship with the sector.

Power distributors and other utility companies have long urged the government to allow them to raise utility prices to bring them in line with market prices.

But with a few exceptions, the government hasn't budged, arguing that energy prices need to be kept low to help boost economic growth and ease costs for lower-income families.

For the most part, electricity prices have been frozen since at least 2002.

Edenor's 2008 annual report indicates the government owed the company around ARS49 million as of the end of 2008, suggesting the ARS60 million payment won't be enough to cover all debt with the sector.

-By Taos Turner, Dow Jones Newswires; 5411-4103-6728; taos.turner@dowjones.com