Milei’s infrastructure deregulation push 'hard to apply'

President Javier Milei’s plans to eliminate Argentina’s public work contractors’ registry, which would allow non-construction firms to participate in infrastructure tenders, would be hard to implement in practice and involve high risks for the State, according to the head of Tucumán’s construction chamber, Jorge Garber.

“It’s weird, but at the same time it doesn’t surprise us, because this government acts like that. At first it said ‘there’s no money and we won’t do any public works’, and now it says ‘we’ll do public works, but the way we want to do it’,” Garber told BNamericas.

Milei announced that firms who want to participate will only need to provide a sworn declaration, as the executive argues that the current framework limits competition and promotes corruption, daily La Nación reported, quoting sources from the deregulation ministry. 

“It’s like I were to go to the doctor and he told me that he doesn’t have a qualification. A sworn declaration wouldn’t give the guarantee that they know how to do it, or even if they’re going to do it in the first place. That doesn’t work and wouldn’t work,” Garber said.

He agreed on the need to reward firms that haven’t been involved in acts of corruption but sees the proposed scheme as “hard to apply.” 

Several construction firms in Argentina have been marred by corruption scandals in recent years, such as the ‘notebooks’ bribery scandal, though many of them have kept participating in tenders.  

Although the details of the new scheme haven’t been published, Garber said the registry Milei seeks to eliminate exists in many other countries, including Chile, whose concession model the president has said he wants to emulate. 

“No matter how big a construction firm is, if it hasn’t been evaluated beforehand, it can’t participate in tenders,” Garber said when defending the registry, which in Argentina’s case dates back to 1947.