For years, a situation has been taking place in the Buenos Aires party of Carlos Casares that reflects the disagreements that usually exist between politics and the productive sector. It concerns the deterioration of rural roads, which have been affected by flooding and lack of maintenance the municipality continues to collect the road tax and even impose increases.

Last Thursday the Deliberative Council of Casares approved a 134 percent increase in the tariff, which will go from 1,300 pesos per hectare to 3,000 pesos per hectare, and Mayor Daniel Stadnik argued that the agricultural sector is “the one who did best in all of 2022”. “We’ve fallen behind on tariffs, and if there’s one sector that can make an effort and help us keep working on the roads, it’s agriculture,” he said.

The decision has generated outrage from hundreds of producers. “It’s by far the party where the tariff has risen the most, and it has risen well above inflation. Council salaries have risen by 90%, diesel by 95%, because the highway tariff rises by 135%? No, there is no explanation,” said the president of the Rural Society of Casares, Mario Reymundo, in dialogue with Rural Clarin.

But then he clarified that what irritates the most is not so much the tariff increase as much the discretion and inefficiency with which the district’s road budget is managed. As detailed, of the 300 million pesos that are collected annually, only 20 percent goes to so-called rural services, i.e. road maintenance and improvement.

“This happens in many parts, the province of Buenos Aires delegates the maintenance of rural roads to the municipalities and allows them to charge a tax, and the municipalities spend as little as possible on the roads. They say it is a solidarity tax, which is available for free, but it is not. Now in Casares they have assigned 50 percent to road maintenance, and it must be 100 percent,” said Reymundo. Then he added that Road tax is usually the most important collection of municipalities and the easiest to collect.

In Casares the producers organized themselves and asked for arguments for the 135 percent increase, but received no explanations. What they have achieved is the creation as of January 1, 2023 of a Roads Commission which will be in charge of controlling the expenditure of the road budgetwhich will be composed of representatives of different institutions and manufacturers.

“People don’t want conflict, people want solutions. We want the Municipality to have a road manager chosen by public competition taking into account his background, who is a suitable person capable of financial planning, efficient logistics, execution of works… “, Reymundo says.

As an example in the matter, producers of Casarense have the municipality of Benito Juarez, which has had a Road Commission for 20 years. “It will be difficult, but the idea is that we start working differently,” concludes the producer.