| Work Detail |
Tucumán seeks to reactivate public works with the PPP model: government and businessmen adjust draft to modality to boost construction, Jaldo and companies are excited but warn that the Achilles heel is access to mortgage credit and lower rates. Tucumán is moving forward with its own Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model to reactivate public works, such as housing construction, which have been paralyzed since President Javier Milei took office on December 10. The model became known, including failure, during the administration of former President Mauricio Macri, which is why those working on its implementation clarify that the provincial version has variants that could guarantee its successful implementation. Since the beginning of the current administration of Governor Osvaldo Jaldo, despite the proximity to the Casa Rosada, the funds allocated by the Nation for public works were meager and in homeopathic doses, so emblematic constructions, such as a new prison in northern Tucumán, with capacity for 1,200 inmates and which began during the government of former governor and now national senator Juan Manzur, are 60% complete. Public works. “Too slow,” admitted a businessman in the sector who is in charge of part of that project. The Government House estimates that, with luck and allocating provincial funds, a first stage could be inaugurated in June, if the National Executive Power does not change the course of the restriction of funds. Meanwhile, and still without answers, the provincial Minister of Public Works and Services, Santiago Yanotti, submitted files to different areas of the national government to request funds for other types of works that are in different stages of execution and that have to do with environmental sanitation, road maintenance, power lines, urbanization, expansion of the drinking water network and housing construction. In this dead end there are two other data that are worrying: Tucuman construction entrepreneurs have not yet received construction certificates from October of last year and the sudden halt in activity (with a 25% drop) caused 4,000 new unemployed, according to David Acosta, general secretary of the sectors union, the UOCRA. Public works: PPP project goes to the Tucumán Legislature For these reasons, Jaldo and the businessmen did not cut off the dialogue and from there emerged the Tucumán PPP project that would advance, in a first stage, to reactivate the construction of houses (3,000 pending) and then would be expanded to road projects. The Tucuman Chamber of Construction (CTC) presented Minister Yanotti with a project that, in fact, is similar to the first Procrear program of the Nation, which was applied with notable success during the presidencies of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. It is a three-pronged operation: the banks must guarantee loans for the housing recipients and will take the mortgage on the land as collateral; the companies will build the houses and the provincial government will take charge of the infrastructure, with funds from the Provincial Housing Institute or the Caja Popular de Ahorros (an autonomous entity that depends on the Government House). Last Friday, Jaldo received Jorge Garber, president of the CTC, and Acosta, from the UOCRA, in his office and gave his approval to the first draft of the project, according to official sources. For this reason, Garber confirmed to Ámbito that a new meeting between the parties will take place today, this time in the office of Minister Yanotti, fully dedicated to polishing the proposal, in which representatives of the Provincial Housing Institute, the Provincial Roads Directorate and the business community will be present. The idea is to establish a roadmap of the responsibilities of each of the parties to translate it into a bill that, as soon as possible, is submitted to the Legislature. The Chamber has already approved a Public Works Emergency Law but none of its articles refer to the local PPP model. It is essential to fill this legal gap, a Government House official clarified to this newspaper. So far everything is going smoothly, but the parties admit that the initiative has a three-pronged Achilles heel: access to mortgage credit, lower rates and the States contribution to infrastructure. In other words, the direction of the economy at a national level will be the great determinant of the application of the PPP to the Tucuman region. PPP public works: a model at the end of the world Tierra del Fuego developed several positive experiences at the provincial level between the private sector and the State. Among them, the municipality of Río Grande and companies urbanized land with public services for the construction of housing; and the municipality of Ushuaia together with the company GDS-Newsan jointly manage an Ice Rink and the Yámana Bar, an efficient alliance for a tourist destination. Among the latest experiences is the project to build a new dock in Río Grande, this time between the provincial government and the Mirgor Group, which aims to transform the northern area of ??Tierra del Fuego, both for productive activities and for tourism. |
