The Norte Grande Regional Council, made up of ten governors of different political persuasions, will hold this Friday in the missionary city of Puerto Iguazú the first meeting of the year with a varied agenda of topics, among which are strategic public works and differential rates for electricity and public transport.
Against the imposing backdrop of the Iguazú Falls, the leaders of the provinces of Misiones, Corrientes, Chaco, Formosa, Jujuy, Salta, La Rioja, Catamarca, Tucumán and Santiago del Estero will once again discuss -from 10:30 a.m.- “central issues for development of the region” at the eighth meeting of the Council of the Norte Grandewhich will also have the presence of officials from the national government, with whom “we are working together to make progress on each item.”
From the Casa Rosada they confirmed to Télam that they will attend the meeting that will take place at the Gran Meliá Iguazú Hotel -within the national park-, the chief of staff, Juan Manzur; the ministers Eduardo de Pedro (Interior), Gabriel Katopodis (Public Works); Alexis Guerrero (Transportation); the Secretary of Energy, Darío Martínez; the Secretary of Provinces, Silvina Batakis; and the head of the Federal Investment Council (CFI), Ignacio Lamothe.
According the agenda of activities handled by the organizers, after the deliberation of the governors and officials behind closed doors, a press conference will be held starting at 1:30 p.m., and then they will share a lunch.
The agenda consists of twelve points, among which the following stand out: an infrastructure plan to improve logistics with the North Bioceanic Corridor; the implementation of a differential energy rate; subsidy for public passenger transport; a plan for lithium development; the Paraná – Paraguay Waterway; and establish a free zone for a cargo transfer system and a dry port.
After having received some governors of that region weeks ago, Manzur met yesterday with the Secretary of Energy, Darío Martínez, and the Undersecretary of Energy, Federico Basualdo, “with the aim of continuing to work for the optimization of the energy system in the Northern Argentina. We redouble efforts to strengthen a more federal country, ”said the chief of staff on his Twitter account.
This point of subsidies to electricity and public passenger transport in the city of Buenos Aires and the Greater Buenos Aires is one of the recurring claims of the governors of all regions of the country and exceeds the partisan color.
In that sense, the leaders of Together for Change from Mendoza, Rodolfo Suárez, and from Jujuy, Gerardo Morales, have expressed this situation and agreed with the rest of the governors that “it is one more discrimination”, for which they differ with the position of the head of the Buenos Aires Government,
Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, who rejects the removal of public transport subsidies, alleging that it is “one more attack by the national government on the City.”
Thus, all the governors have the goal of advancing with what is called the ‘Hot Zone’, in comparison to the Cold Zone that several provinces achieved to have a subsidized gas rate for being a region of low temperatures.
One of those promoting this issue is the Chaco governor Jorge Capitanich, who days ago maintained that “the idea is to ratify -at the Iguazú summit- what we had started before the treatment of the 2022 Budget law that was frustrated in Congress of the Nation” regarding the differential energy tariff.
A detailed study was carried out on this subject and Capitanich’s proposal has the endorsement of his peers in the Norte Grande, since it provides for a differential energy rate, especially in the months of greatest consumption and where heat waves are a determining factor. .
Although it is not on the agenda to be discussed, the main issue that runs through all the issues will be the explicit commitment of the national government to maintain the resources allocated to the public works planned for this year, which have been left without their respective allocations. due to the lack of approval of the 2022 Budget.
