After a Supreme Court hearing on Wednesday, Buenos Aires City Mayor Jorge Macri announced an agreement with the national government to heed the top tribunal’s 2022 ruling guaranteeing the payment of 2.95 percent of federal revenue-sharing funds to the capital.
"We want to reassure porteños that we have reached an agreement for the collection of the 2.95 percent which will permit City Hall to give [citizens] answers,” said the mayor.
“This is a very important step ahead with goodwill on both sides, the national and City governments,” maintained Macri.
The remarks were delivered after a hearing convoked by the Supreme Court to define the way in which Argentina’s national administration must pay the Buenos Aires City government. The two sides committed themselves to presenting a joint agreement within five working days in compliance with the Court’s injunction establishing the payment of 2.95 percent of ‘coparticipación’ federal revenue-sharing funds.
According to the agreement, 1.4 percent will be paid on a daily basis and 1.55 percent weekly.
"The in-depth discussion continues because, according to our understanding, the City has a right to 3.5 percent while the national government has a different outlook,” said Macri. “We’ll go working on that. But we have taken a very important step forward. I value the gesture of the national government in seeking an agreement and may we together unblock something which our two administrations inherited and which did not seem to have a solution.”
Macri was accompanied at the meeting by City Attorney-General Martín Ocampo and City Justice Minister Gabino Tapia while the national government was represented by Treasury Secretary Carlos Guberman.
The City mayor had talked over the agreement in advance with Economy Minister Luis Caputo, according to reports.
The deal follows on last month’s transfer of bus lines from national to municipal jurisdiction, an accord sealed after earlier talks with the Milei administration.
City Hall spokespersons observed that the original problem dated from when the previous Kirchnerite presidency of Alberto Fernández "made the unconsulted and unconstitutional decision to strip the City’s federal revenue-sharing coefficient down to 1.4 percent," transferring the funds to Buenos Aires Province then facing a provincial police mutiny in September 2020 in order to resolve pay grievances.
"When City Hall appealed to the Supreme Court, Kirchnerism never heeded the injunction of December 22, 2022, setting the City’s federal revenue-sharing coefficient at 2.95 percent," said the spokesperson.
While Macri obtained partial satisfaction, other jurisdictions were more aggrieved.
One of the few numbers thrown out by President Javier Milei when presenting the 2025 Budget last Sunday supremely worried provincial governors. The provinces would have to make an adjustment of US$60 billion, as required by the President, equivalent to almost the totality of all their budgets.
To calm waters, Cabinet Chief Guillermo Francos invited all 23 provincial governors plus Mayor Macri to his office last Monday with Economy Minister Caputo at his side.
Only Governors Rogelio Frigerio (Entre Ríos) and Hugo Passalacqua (Misiones) showed up in person while 14 other governors connected via teleconference: Raúl Jalil (Catamarca), Leandro Zdero (Chaco), Ignacio Torres (Chubut), Carlos Sadir (Jujuy), Alfredo Cornejo (Mendoza), Alberto Weretilneck (Río Negro), Gustavo Sáenz (Salta), Marcelo Orrego (San Juan), Claudio Poggi (San Luis), Claudio Vidal (Santa Cruz), Maximiliano Pullaro (Santa Fe), Gerardo Zamora (Santiago del Estero), Osvaldo Jaldo (Tucumán) and Sergio Ziliotto (La Pampa).
The Federal Capital was represented by its Cabinet Chief Néstor Grindetti, Córdoba by its lieutenant-governor and Corrientes and Neuquén by their provincial economy ministers.
Buenos Aires Province, Formosa, La Rioja and Tierra del Fuego shunned the meeting altogether but the outcry against Milei’s announcement was general.
"It would be zero budget, not zero deficit," was the response given to Perfil by Governor Axel Kicillof’s Peronist government in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina’s most populous and productive province.
"The adjustment of US$60 billion asked of the provinces would be the equivalent of this province’s entire budget, which is 40 percent of that adjustment. That is how unreal Milei’s aspiration is," they spelled out.
Kicillof, according to reports, was not invited to the meeting.
– TIMES/NA/PERFIL
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