The total amount includes the distribution of 66 million liters of bottled water, the exemption from taxes on this product and the transfer work in the San José river.
The government invested more than 70 million dollars in the different measures carried out to alleviate the water crisis that affected the country and, mainly, the metropolitan area of Uruguay during the more than two months that the water emergency lasted.
With the signing of the decree and yesterday’s announcement, the water crisis seems to be more and more a bad memory for the country. He official end of the state of water emergencymade possible by the significant rainfall in recent days, which made it possible to significantly recover the levels of drinking water reserves for the areas most affected by the deficit -Montevideo and the surrounding towns—, is the first step towards the more “normal” scenario that is projected for the coming months.
However, there are still issues that will continue to be analyzed during the following weeks, such as the investment of more than 70 million dollars carried out by the Executive Power in the context of the emergency, as confirmed yesterday by the president Luis Lacalle Pou when announcing the signing of the decree.
The total investment amount includes, in turn, the distribution of 66 million liters of bottled water to the population, the work of transferring the river Saint Joseph to the St. Lucia and the tax waiver implied by the tax exemptions for bottled water, the main resource given the increase in salinity experienced by the supply of the National Administration of State Sanitary Works (OSE).
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) will release adjusted figures of the investments made by the government during the water emergency.
The implications of the end of the water emergency
With the announcement of the end of the water emergency, President Lacalle Pou also confirmed that the economic aid that the government had provided to the most vulnerable families in the Uruguay to buy bottled water. The economic support will be carried out until the month of September and, from there, it will stop providing. The government had benefited more than 500,000 people with this agreement.
The other measure taken by the government is to reverse the exoneration of the Value Added Tax (VAT) that had been proclaimed at the beginning of the water emergency to prevent the costs of bottled water keep shooting. This measure had made a 6-liter drum cost 40 Uruguayan pesos.
Source: Ambito
