The former Minister of Infrastructure of Javier Milei, Guillermo Ferrarowarned this Thursday that the privatization process for the railway sector could end in “failure.” To avoid it “Some central issues must be taken into account that can make the project viable or impracticable”he stated.
“Since the dissolution of the Ministry of Infrastructure, the issue of transport policy and in particular the fate of the railway operation has lacked strategic orientation,” he said. Ferraro.
Ferraro was the first ejected from the national cabinet in Marchafter he was named as the author of the leak of the phrase “I’m going to leave you penniless, I’m going to melt you all down”, allegedly uttered by Milei about the governors in a cabinet meeting after the legislative defeat of the omnibus law.
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So that the “perspiration” stage, as the minister explains @fedesturze does not end in a failure in the railway plans
Faced with the announcement about the privatization of the Belgrano Carga Railway, we must take into account some central issues that can make viable or…
— Guillermo J. Ferraro (@gjferraro) October 24, 2024
In your X post, Ferraro He was very critical of the way transportation policy is being carried out. He stated that the Government does not know how the transportation of people is integrated, which generates distrust in compliance with the commitments at the time of the transfer of the operation”.
According to him, during the electoral campaign, LLA’s technical teams worked with professionals from each sector to “transfer to the private sector the investment and design efforts of the proposed solution through the private initiative system (‘Chilean style’)” .
The reasons for the alert due to the announcement of the privatization of Belgrano Cargas
According to Ferraro, the details that are known so far “they warn of repeating a totally disintegrated approach to strategic transport policy”.
“The fragmentation of operations in the operational chain (maintenance of tracks, rolling stock, 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 objective for the improvement of the railway sector and adds uncertainty about the viability of the businessin all or some of the fragments, making the entire process vulnerable,” he warned.
He criticized the idea of Open Accessalready used in the ’90s, and warned that “it requires an in-depth study of the characteristics and restrictions of railway operation.”
If we insist on them, according to Ferraro, we could “return to the failures of the past, where each contract has ended in a conflict with the State, and in the re-nationalization of the assets involved.”
Source: Ambito