The Government held a public hearing this Thursday morning
to legally validate the massive reduction in subsidies
to households, better allocate State aid and reduce the fiscal deficit.
Among the presentations of several officials and official advisors,
Martín Vauthier,
who works closely with the Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, compared the Nation's expenses in subsidies for electricity, gas and bottle rates with the
funds allocated to the Universal Child Allowance
(AUH).
Thus, he showed that in 2023, while energy subsidies reached 1.5% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the AUH program received only 0.4%.
Going back, the same thing happened since at least 2019, and
State expenses were always higher to help millions of households than those focused on the most vulnerable people.
This is one of the reasons why
the Government wants to strongly restrict the conditions to access the state subsidy
and will cross multiple income and assets databases, thereby leaving out those who
have purchased dollars
or other foreign currency in recent years. 3 months, to those who
traveled abroad
(non-neighboring countries) in the last 5 years, those who use
prepaid plans
not linked to their employment in a dependency relationship and those who have a car or motorcycle less than 5 years old, among others Exclusion criteria.
The idea of Javier Milei's team is to establish
single rates
that reflect the costs of supplying the electrical energy and natural gas system through networks, and grant
a direct transfer or discounts to users identified as vulnerable.
"The demand subsidy scheme makes it possible to rationalize consumption, with significant savings for the country, and focus transfers on those who need it most. This is added to the reinforcement of
social programs without intermediaries
," said Vauthier.
"In a context of scarce resources,
subsidies for non-residential demand are eliminated,
such as in production processes, given that in this case it is not possible to ensure that the real beneficiaries are the lower-income sectors," commented the advisor of the Ministry of Economy.
News in development