EL INTERIN – “In times of emergency, corruption increases,” says Delia Ferreira Rubio, president of the non-governmental organization Transparency International.
A shame that reflects the disenchantment of those who thought that the pandemic would make people better. Above all, those who take advantage of the so-called “COVID contracts” from both the public and private sectors, which, adds Ferreira Rubio, “have an extremely high burden of immorality”.
How serious is corruption? The Corruption Perception Index 2020 “reveals that it is undermining health systems and contributing to democratic backsliding,” Ferreira Rubio subscribes.
Argentina dropped 12 places in the first year of Alberto Fernández’s government. It went from position 66 to 78 among 180 countries surveyed.
Everything gets worse with the pandemic.
Both in the national government and in the provinces and municipalities “the short term is privileged,” says Diana Mondino.
The YPF company, which produces 28 percent of the gas and 47 percent of the country’s oil, is in a delicate financial situation, as detailed by the economist Alejandro Einstoss, a member of the Instituto Argentino de la Energía General Mosconi.
“There is a structural drop in YPF’s production in the last 20 years and a heavy financial debt that was contracted as of 2012, whose resources were applied to the Vaca Muerta project,” says Einstoss. Argentina, he adds, “is not competitive producing oil and gas.”
The numbers do not give, “something evident in 2020 with the quarantine situation that has been more complex than many anticipated and economic policy decisions that I do not like,” explains economist Diana Mondino, professor of Finance at the University of the Center for Macroeconomic Studies of Argentina (CEMA).
Both in the national government and in the provinces and municipalities “the short term is privileged.”
