Last year, the provinces that received the most funds per capita under federal fiscal co-ownership, special laws and compensations administered by the national government were Tierra del Fuego, Catamarca, Formosa, La Rioja, La Pampa and Santa Cruz, in a range that goes from 534,000 to 397,000 dollars per inhabitant per year, or between 79 and 33% more than the national average per inhabitant, which was 298,000 pesos.
The government has increased the Expenditure Budget by more than $52,000 million, for discretionary transfers to the provinces and price control
He did so through Administrative Decision 122 of February 17 with the signature of the brand new head of the Cabinet of Ministers, Agustín Rossi, and the Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa.
Behind these 6 provinces, but still receiving more than the national average of funds per capita, were Chaco, San Luis, San Juan and Santiago del Estero. Thus, 10 received more funds per capita than the national average and the others less.
At the opposite extreme, the neighborhoods that received the least funds per capita, from lowest to highest, were the city of Buenos Aires, the province of Buenos Aires, Mendoza, Córdoba and Neuquén, but with very different figures. : $61,000 per capita per year that CABA received was just over half of the $113,000 received by the governor-led administration Axel Kicillof and less than a third of those who received Neuquén ($203,000) and Córdoba ($185,000), again in annual per capita terms. The government of Buenos Aires received a fifth of the national average per capita, shows a study by the Argentine Institute of Fiscal Analysis (Iaraf), the economist Nadine Arganarazbased on data from the National Directorate of Provincial Affairs, the Ministry of Finance and INDEC.
In turn, of the provinces that received the most funds per capita, only two, Tierra del Fuego and Santa Cruz, are “high-income.” These are the two least populated provinces in the country. The $534,000 per capita of Tierra del Fuego implies that the provincial government of Gustave Melella received $44,500 a month in federal funds for each island resident. A similar exercise reveals that the government of Alice Kircherreceived just over $33,000 per month per capita from Santa Cruz, the country’s second-largest province by land area, behind Buenos Aires.
Public spending: the government started the year with strict control of the accounts and would end the first month with a surplus
According to private estimates, January would have had a favorable outcome of around $170,000 million. The Ministry of Finance will publish the data this Wednesday, which is part of the objectives with the IMF
The main objective of the work, the document indicates, is to analyze the differences in real transfers per capita (adjusted to December 2022), in terms of co-participation, special laws and compensations and taking data from the recent national census of the population carried out by the Indec.
Second, the work assesses the impact that the Supreme Court of Justice’s 2023 action on transfers to CABA would have. Should the national government comply, the district of Buenos Aires would go from being the one that receives the least per capita to being the second that receives the least, relegating the province of Buenos Aires to the bottom of the table. The translation into December 2022 values, specifies the document, allows a more realistic assessment of the situation.
Key negotiation with the IMF: the government must raise $4,000 million to meet the reserve target
At least some $1.5 trillion would be contributed by the organization itself, as the remainder of the next disbursement that Sergio Massa’s envoys in Washington are seeking to secure, in addition to discussing new goals
In addition, for a more homogeneous analysis of the distribution, the work distinguished the 24 jurisdictions (23 provinces and CABA) according to two criteria: the level of average income and the population density (i.e. the number of inhabitants per square kilometer). From the intersection of these conditions, the study identifies 4 groups: the first, high-income and high-density neighborhoods (Buenos Aires, CABA, Córdoba, Mendoza and Santa Fe); the second, with high incomes and low density (Chubut, La Pampa, Neuquén, Río Negro, San Luis, Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego); the third with low income and high density (Chaco, Corrientes, Entre Ríos, Jujuy, Misiones and Tucumán); and the fourth, low income and low density (Catamarca, Formosa, La Rioja, Salta, San Juan and Santiago del Estero).
From the analysis of the first group, it appears that Santa Fe is the jurisdiction that received the most real transfers per capita in 2022, some $213,000 per capita/year, followed by Córdoba ($185,000), Mendoza (172 $000), Buenos Aires ($113,000) and CABA ($61,000).
In the group of high-income and low-density neighborhoods, Tierra del Fuego and Santa Cruz stand out, in addition to San Luis ($344,000 per capita/year), Río Negro, Río Negro ($274,000), Chubut ( $222,000) and Neuquén ($203,000).
Among the low-income, high-density provinces, Catamarca received the most actual funding per capita in 2022: $521,000 per year, followed by Formosa ($498,000), La Rioja ($442,000), San Juan ( $339,000), Santiago del Estero ($326,000). ) and Salta ($225,000).
Among the group of low-income, low-density districts, the province that benefited the most was Chaco, which received $365,000 per capita per year (or $1,000 per capita per day), followed by Jujuy ($295,000), Entre Ríos ($284,000), Corrientes ($263,000), Tucumán ($232,000) and Misiones ($219,000).
In turn, based on the analysis of the 2023 budget, the study specifies that this year the average annual transfers per inhabitant would be slightly higher: at the values of December 2022, $300,000 instead of $298,000 last year , still in the concept of co-participation. , special laws and compensation.
For this calculation, the document specifies, “it was assumed that CABA would actually receive the co-ownership transfers during the year 2023 according to the judgment of the Supreme Court of Justice. And to estimate the population of each jurisdiction in the year, we use the average annual growth rate of the intercensal population (that is to say between 2010 and 2022).
Similar to 2022, this year also out of the 24 jurisdictions, 10 would receive actual per capita amounts above the national average. They are exactly the same and even in the same order: Tierra del Fuego, Catamarca, Formosa, La Rioja, La Pampa, Santa Cruz, Chaco, San Luis, San Juan and Santiago del Estero, all districts politically aligned with the national government , with the relative exception of San Luis, which would receive in different types of federal transfers between $325.00 and $525,000 per capita per year, always at the values of last December. This implies that in nominal terms, they are likely to receive double, according to the inflation forecast (REM) released by the Central Bank to economic advisers.
At the opposite extreme, if the national government were to comply with the Supreme Court ruling, there would be a change: CABA would cease to be the district that receives the least funds per capita/year, going from $61,000 in 2022 to $128,000 in 2023, a real improvement of more than 100%, while the province of Buenos Aires would become the least, despite the fact that the post-resident funds would increase slightly from $113,000 last year to 115 $000 this year. Mendoza and Santa Fe would receive, in real terms, the same amounts as in 2022, while Córdoba and Neuquén would receive slightly lower figures than last year.
The report points out that if the Court’s judgment is respected within the framework of the 2023 budget, the growth of the average real transfers per capita, from 2,000 dollars to the values of last December, would mainly result from the precautionary measure, which explains the will of the government’s refusal to comply with the decision of the highest court, in particular in view of the significant tax benefit that compliance would bring to the District of Buenos Aires and the slight prejudice that it would cause to the District of Buenos Aires, main bet of the ruling party – and in particular Kirchnerism, the main partner of the government coalition – in the presidential elections this year.
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