Today the subsidies received by passenger transport in the AMBA reach 24.7 billion pesoswhile the interior barely receives 3.8 billionfunds that are from the National Treasury.
The Secretary of Transportation of the city of Córdoba, Marcelo Rodio, is the one who carries the flag and has been warning of the situation in the interior, where he remarked that “there is inequity in the allocation of subsidies between the AMBA and the interior.” In this sense, he explained that the situation is “inexplicable” since the costs per kilometer are identical. “The Minister of Transportation of the Nation does not attend to us,” he claimed.
The complaint joins districts such as Rosario, Mendoza and Santa Fe, where there is also discomfort due to the lack of response from the National Government. Last weekend, Rodio gave an interview and from the Ministry of Transportation they went to the intersection, so the matter has become a point of conflict between two sides: the City and the Province against the interior.
“The National State has breached the 2017 fiscal pact,” said the Secretary of Transportation of the city of Mendoza, Natalio Mema. “In the case of Mendoza, the province had to contribute its own resources, something that was not agreed upon, and the Nation contributes less than 15% of what it assigns to the AMBA to the interior,” the official said.
Increase of the ticket inside, 300% more than in the AMBA
Although the value of the ticket rises, the increases are not enough to cover the expenses, according to sources in the sector, and they warn that it will only cause the number of daily passengers to drop. Officials from the Interior Transportation portfolio insist on the need for a “Federal Transportation Law” that gives predictability to the sector in a context of high inflation and falling profitability, they maintain.
They emphasize in this sense that, currently, for every peso that the National State allocates to the interior, it sends 8 pesos to the AMBA. The authorities of the different jurisdictions sent a statement last week to the National Minister of Transport, Alexis Guerrera. They asked him to improve the distribution of subsidies and warned about “the lack of resources to face the increase in costs.”
This conflict is added to another that has been affecting transport in the AMBA itself for weeks, where bus companies have lowered travel frequencies in protest at the lack of resource transfer.
Buses Public Transport
Ignatius Petunichi
Regarding national subsidies, the provinces reiterated “their position regarding the need to correct the existing asymmetries between the national subsidies assigned to the transportation systems of the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires and the rest of the jurisdictions in the interior of the country, through the enactment of a law that contemplates objective and equitable parameters for the distribution of national subsidies”.
In the provinces they claim for the Federal Transportation Law, an initiative that will set rules in the allocation of subsidies to end the inequity that the provinces suffer today.
“The Transport Commission of Deputies must deal with the project to begin to give answers,” they claim in the sector. The provinces also asked the Nation to speed up “the subsidy payment processes” since the delays registered in recent times “involves consistent financial damage to the jurisdictions,” they said from the Argentine Federation of Automotive Passenger Transporters (FATAP), who brings together the leaders of the sector.
Source: Ambito
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