November 4, 2022, 13:19 PM
November 4, 2022, 13:19 PM
The economic losses of eight sectors of Santa Cruz accumulate in 14 days of unemployment $503.7 million, According to the Minister of Economy and Public Finance, Marcelo Montenegro, who blamed Governor Luis Fernando Camacho for the losses and justified the siege of the department as a popular reaction to the “lack of ethics of the business and civic elites” of the department.
“We hold the governor responsible for the accumulated losses of more than $500 million,” Camacho said at a press conference.
The sectors that are part of the calculation are manufacturing industry, construction, wholesale and retail sales, transportation and storage, lodging activities, artistic and entertainment activities, other service activities and agriculture.
The governor of Santa Cruz, said Montenegro“it even intends to extend this (the strike) to the national level, that is irresponsible in a stage of reconstruction of the economyeven more so when we have taken care that inflation does not increase” and in which the world is heading for a recession not seen for more than 30 years.
In a press release, the Ministry of Economy reported that unemployment in Santa Cruz will have negative consequences on economic growth, on the labor market, on foreign trade, on tax collections and on inflation. “The population that lives from their daily work is the most affected because they cannot carry out their activities normally,” the document cites.
For Montenegrin, the siege of Santa Cruz “has been a response from the popular sectors, given the lack of ethics of the business and civic eliteswho required the little ones to abide by the strike, but they did not abide by it”.
“It has been shown that there were transit permits for large businessmen, but what about the small ones? So, obviously the popular sectors react and if there is a strike, let’s all stop.” It is “a reaction of the people in relation to this imbalance of a strike that was not the same for all”, maintained Montenegro.
The authority also insisted that the Santa Cruz strike will have consequences on the country’s economy, which after the pandemic is in a “reconstruction stage.”
Regarding the announcement by civic groups from other departments to start an indefinite national strike on Monday, November 7, if by that date no Supreme Decree 4760 is abrogated, the siege of the Santa Cruz capital is lifted, a dialogue table is installed and the country is pacifiedMontenegro said: “It is not reasonable that civic committees want to emulate that irresponsible activity of the governor (of Santa Cruz), because the economy is under reconstruction.”
“There is no argument for a national strike”, he maintained, before detailing the opportunities in which the Government offered dialogue.
If the national indefinite strike takes place “they will have to account to the Bolivian peopleat the time, due to the events that generate this in economic terms to various sectors of the national economy”, he stressed.
