Harsh warning from Javier Milei’s former minister on the privatization of Belgrano Cargas

Guillermo Ferraro, consultant and expert in infrastructure projects, was appointed Minister of Infrastructure by Javier Milei, a position that lasted only three months. Yesterday he reappeared to warn about the weak points of the privatization project of the strategic Belgrano Cargas.

In a long poster online

1-“since the dissolution of the Ministry of Infrastructure, the issue of transport policy and in particular the fate of railway operations it lacked strategic orientation

2-propose schemes to the private sector where it is not known exactly how the transport of people, goods by waterway, integration with regional trade and other parameters that can outline the defendant’s “business plan” will be integrated. invest at risk for long capital recovery periods invested, makes us reflect with distrust in respecting the commitments undertaken at the time of the transfer of the company

3-more than a year before winning the presidential elections, the technical teams of the LLA, together with Javier Milei, worked with specific professionals in each sector, to plan the central idea of ​​​​who is today the President of the Nation, namely to transfer investments and design efforts of the proposed solution to the private sector through private initiative system (“Chilean style”) and which led to the first legislative initiative of the Executive Power (the so-called “basic law”) which incorporated, under the impetus of the Ministry teams, substantial changes to the law on concessions (#17520), incorporating modern statutes based on examples of success and corrective factors specific to the Argentine experience, allow for the transfer of operations that are currently in the hands of the public sector to the private sector, minimizing risks, providing greater legal certainty, greater transparency in the concession process and increasing expectations on the amounts of major investments , based on the modernization needs in each sector subject to privatisation

4-the details of the advert on Belgrano Cargas that are known have been inserted There is a warning that a totally disintegrated approach to strategic transport policy is being repeated: the fragmentation of operations in the operational chain (maintenance of roads, rolling stock, the commercial operation itself, etc.), although it has as a correlation the possibility of attracting interested parties who qualify with lower investment requirements and experience in the railway business itself , it also reduces the expected target for the improvement of the railway sector and adds uncertainty about the feasibility of the activity, in all or some of its fragments, making the process as a whole vulnerable.

5- the idea of Open Access, already proposed in other administrations since the 1990s, has presented several drawbacks, inspiring this change of approach in implementation. Although it is a model that has essentially worked in Europe, the context in terms of extension of branches, concession conditions and commercial competence of operators is very different from that of our country.

6- Finally, this topic requires a in-depth study on the characteristics and constraints of railway operation(there are sections with a sufficient profitable load, there are others which even in private hands are not sustainable or must be subsidized) the reimbursement of the concession must be commensurate with the capacity to repay, which is totally different in each case. In short, our idea of ​​effectively incorporating the private sector from the planning of the operation to its financing would make it possible to make the economic-financial balance of the contracts sustainable over time, and not to fall back into the failures of the past. , where each contract ended with a conflict with the State, and with the renationalization of the assets involved”.