Discretionary transfers are called, in the jargon of specialists, those additional tax resources which arise from the underestimation of inflation and which the Government distributes among the provinces, outside the national budget and generally through agreements related to their political interests. Silver for favors as even the most inexperienced governor knows.
Managed like no other by Kirchnerism since the days of President Néstor K., this system of rewards and punishments, of allies and adversaries, today faces the obstacles imposed by the agreement with the Monetary Fund or, if you prefer, the scythe of adaptation. “We will take action to limit discretionary transfers to provinces and state-owned enterprises,” reads the Memorandum signed in March 2022.
A report from the consultancy Aerarium confirms that the hand really does come this way.
It reveals that even though discretionary transfers have seen a very substantial increase of 56% in the first nine months of this year compared to the same period in 2021, the full tally says they lose 27 percentage points against inflation.
In any case, we are talking about a non-negligible 480,000 million dollars that are on track to close 2022 above 500,000 million dollars.
The point is that there send a province which, thanks to the way in which La Rosada manages the funds, almost linked to super inflation and also gets a cut that is far and far beyond what it received from any of the 23 remaining jurisdictions. It hardly exceeds the sum of all together.
no surprise: This is Buenos Aires, the territory where Axel Kicillof paints to go to the re-election of Cristina Kirchner’s arm and, at the same time, the place where Cristina Kirchner concentrates her electoral capital and from which she plans to gain strength, in the face of adversity, whether or not.
Definitely privileged by the return of Kirchnerism, the governor of Buenos Aires has already received $203.4 billion in those nine months of 202281% or $91,000 million more than January-September 2021. This pile of silver represents none other than 42.4% of the total package and, moreover, up by six percentage points compared to 36.4% in 2021.
Just to better understand what quantities we are talking about and at the risk of continuing to confuse what is already entangled, it is worth adding that compared to that 42.4% the rest of the country loses by a landslide. Four examples: the City of Buenos Aires, second in the standings, has 6.1%; 5.8% in Santa Fe; 5.4% in La Rioja and 4.3% in the fifth of the above lot, which is Córdoba.
It is clear from these incredibly clear numbers that the distribution of fiscal resources is very unequal It is not associated with the number of inhabitants, nor with the conditions in which they livenor, in short, to anything that sounds similar to objective criteria. It is pure and classic Kirchnerism.
That the province of Buenos Aires had received 203,400 million dollars against 28,000 of Santa Fe and just 20,700 of Córdoba, to cite just a few cases on the list, also refers to a slogan that Néstor K. had brought from Santa Cruz and repeated like a dogma among his treasury secretaries.
He said that the box gives power and that the bigger the box the more power you have, encouraging them to keep hoarding. Applied as it is applied, so is the formula a very K way of understanding federalism, that is, very unfederal.
There is a handbook in the composition of discretionary transfers and the way they are administered concrete privilegesand also politicians, designed at the top of power and placed in the bank with the money of the national state.
We have there, among other benefits, subsidies for hospitals and medical coverage; education funding; food assistance; Public Works; advances from the Ministry of the Interior called ATN and a huge accumulation of co-participation funds which, by decree of Alberto F. of September 2020, were taken from the CABA and transferred to the Province.
Whether you enter from the right or left or in any other way, the result always gives a winner in Buenos Aires. For a long time and always, from 2020.
Continuously and inevitably in figures, now there are also discretionary sales that are going right of the Casa Rosada to the municipalities, without going through the governors’ offices. That is to say direct and sometimes underhanded agreements with the mayors, that is with those who know the terrain on which they are located and the best ways to exploit money like few others.
It is much less money than that of the provincial package, obviously, but it is clearly visible, on posters and billboards placed in front of the voters themselves. No coincidence then, 93% of the 60,400 million dollars distributed between January and September was for investments in basic and fast-running infrastructure, such as roads, sewers, water and public lighting.
The protagonist of the operation is the Plan Argentina Hace, created at the beginning of the Alberto Fernández administration and aimed at generating work for the inhabitants of the site. The electoral heart is in the Third Section of the GBA which contributes nearly 5 million voters and integrates, among other parties, La Matanza, Lomas de Zamora, Quilmes, Almirante Brown and Avellanada.
More of the same color and with the same seal, 57% of the total transfers remain in the municipalities of the province of Buenos Aires, against 8% of the municipalities of Córdoba, 7% of Entre Ríos and a very modest 4% for Santa Fede Non new explanations are needed: everything is in sight.
In sight, but with an announced end, it would be worth adding an article taken from the opposition to the 2023 Budget. It states that if next year’s inflation exceeds the 60% annual threshold set by the Government by 10 percentage points, it will have to be a corrective to the law that establishes how the extra resources that will derive from crossing the 60% with the final inflation will be distributed. Even if it is not in the very short term, discretionary transfers already have their destination fixed: the latest forecast by analysts consulted by the Central Bank sings 96%.
Once the maneuver falls, the calculations that the economists of Kirchnerism had begun to reshuffle on the revenues that, underestimating inflation, would leave them in 2023, precisely in an election year, fall to the touch. “But just in case, it’s better to be on the lookout and not trust that there will be no traps,” say the scalded Juntos economists.
Buenos Aires is also a sign that money doesn’t fix what management leaves out, even if it’s big money and permanent. They say very precise data, as requested by the vice president.
With a rate of 42% measured by the number of people, the suburbs of Buenos Aires register a poverty that is surpassed only by that of Resistencia among the 32 agglomerations surveyed by the INDEC household survey. That is 5.3 million and something more: in the ranking of poverty, the GBA is fourth.
We are talking, in the words of INDEC, of people whose income is not sufficient to cover “a set of food and non-food needs deemed essential”, including, among others, “education, health, transport and clothing”. People who also vote.
Source: Clarin
