The governors did not take 2 pages from their Friday excursion to the Casa Rosada with the titles of the new (old) and smaller omnibus law, as had transpired.
They took one more.
The third
piece of Cabinet letterhead
details the Government's plans for public companies.
“It was an
almost choreographed movement
,” said a JxC provincial leader.
“We are going to give you a folder,” said Chief of Staff
Nicolás Posse
, microphone in hand, after breaking the ice and giving the floor to Interior Minister
Guillermo Francos
.
At that moment the folder with the three pages appeared.
In the first ones appeared the titles of the omnibus law, which
this newspaper announced
, and the fiscal package.
In the third, the names of
13 public companies
, grouped by the destiny that Javier Milei and his collaborators imagine for them:
privatized, mixed companies or concessions
.
They are
many fewer than the 41
that appeared in the original draft of the Base Law and almost half of the 27 that the ruling party managed to get approved in the general vote.
However, when the ruling party decided to adjourn the private voting session and send the project back to committee and on a clean slate, the Government was preparing to receive a
resounding setback
precisely in the privatization chapter.
It mattered little that the political and legislative swords of LLA argued that the fact that companies were eligible for partial or complete privatization did not mean that they would actually undergo that process.
The first batch of companies to be fully privatized that the Government communicated to the governors and block heads include
Aerolíneas Argentinas, Energía Argentina SA, Radio y Televisión SE, Yacimientos Carboniferos Río Turbio (YCRT) and Intercargo
.
The Government is no longer thinking about handing over the flag carrier to its workers.
While defining how to liquidate Télam, despite the defense of its workers, it also wants to privatize the rest of the public media and YCRT, although the coal company's controller
said it would not close
.
Intercargo workers, which provides ramp services and transfers passengers to boarding areas, held surprise meetings on Friday in Ezeiza that affected flight schedules.
Among the companies that could incorporate a mixed system are
Banco Nación and all the companies of Grupo Nación
(which adds up to 4 other firms);
Nucleoeléctrica SA,
which operates the Embalse and Atucha I nuclear power plants and the
satellite company ARSAT
.
The sketch that the governors received does not explain whether the model would be like that of YPF, which controls half plus one of the share package.
The companies that could be privatized or concessioned complete the list:
Aysa, Correo Argentino, Belgrano Cargas, Sociedad Ferroviaria.
SE and Road Corridors
.
After the departure of Guillermo Ferraro from the former Ministry of Infrastructure, Posse managed to take over two sensitive secretariats that concern the new scheme and that did not remain under the umbrella of the Ministry of Economy Economy:
Concessions and Telecommunications
.
The
General Administration of Ports, Construction of Housing for the Navy, the Argentine Air Navigation Company, Argentine Energy and Agricultural Technological Innovations
, among others, disappeared from the list that the Government wanted to approve at the beginning of February.
After the requests of some governors, the requests of the Armed Forces were heard.
There is caution in the opposition for now, while they wait for the fine print of the project.
“
The radicals are not going to accompany the privatization of Banco Nación
”, says one of the legislative swords of the PRO who loves Rodrigo de Loredo, but knows that the head of the radical bloc does not command all of his co-religionists.
Cristina Kirchner
, on the other hand, stated in private conversations that she would be willing to admit the partial privatization of that organization, although
she was careful not to make those statements public
.
The former president mentions the experience of the partial renationalization of YPF as a witness case.
The head of the Banking and Kirchnerist deputy
Sergio Palazzo
was the first to raise the flag against any attempt at privatization.
The former head of state referred to privatizations 14 times in her
33-page document
that she released in mid-February.
Almost always to insult them.
“(The Government) intends to repeat privatizations, indiscriminate openings and deregulations without realizing that the world that received Carlos Menem as president has nothing to do with the current one,” wrote the former president twenty days before the Rioja and Peronist chieftain was promoted - by
order of Karina Milei
- to the stature of a hero and her portrait would be displayed in the
former Women's Hall of the Casa Rosada
.