From new airport terminals to underground roads and elevated railways, President Mauricio Macri is rushing to inaugurate infrastructure projects worth billions of dollars over the next few months, just in time for the October election.
Ribbon-cutting ceremonies during electoral campaigns are an old political strategy. Yet those might be the precious few accomplishments Macri, who’s seeking a second term this year, will be able to showcase in a country mired in a deep recession and ravaged by inflation that’s running at an annual pace of 55 percent.
It’s too early to tell whether the strategy will succeed in boosting his re-election chances. The economic crisis that culminated last year in an unpopular agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has hurt the president’s approval rating so much that, in recent opinion polls, he is in a dead heat with his predecessor and likely contender Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
“If voters can see through the wall of economic problems, public works will favour Macri,” said Juan Germano, director at Isonomia, a consultancy in Buenos Aires. “As an engineer, public works are part of his identity.”
SPENDING CUTS
The works are part of Macri’s original plan to invest as much as US$35 billion in infrastructure projects through a combination of public and private money, as well as financing from multilateral institutions. That goal will be hard to achieve since the government was forced to cut capital expenditures by more than 30 percent in this year’s budget to comply with the terms of the IMF deal.
Public-private partnerships also didn’t work as well as expected. Some of them were put on hold as market financing dried up, said Matias Surt, an economist with Buenos Airesbased consultancy Invecq.
Yet the government decided not to stop works already in progress and projects that have started when Macri’s term began in December 2015 are now at full speed.
Air travellers will soon benefit from a new departures terminal and a parking lot being added to Ezeiza international airport at a cost of US$179 million, financed partly via airport fees. Another 17 airports are being upgraded, including those serving the Iguazú Falls National Park and the ski resort of Bariloche.
“This is the most ambitious investment programme in our history,” said Martín Eurnekian, president of Aeropuertos Argentina 2000, the company in charge of more than 30 airports in the country.
TARGETING VOTERS
The most visible projects are in the capital and Buenos Aires Province, home to 45 percent of the country’s voters.
Among them is the Paseo del Bajo, a seven-kilometre underground highway that is expected to drastically reduce travel time in downtown Buenos Aires. With its initial project dating more than four decades ago, the US$672-million project has been built with public funds and financing by the CAF Latin American development bank.
“After working for more than two years, we will no longer see buses and trucks on the surface,” said Franco Moccia, the City’s minister of urban development and transport.
Another project is the construction of two elevated railways, the US$160-million Viaducto Mitre and the US$237- million Viaducto San Martín, that could bring some relief to Buenos Aires’ chaotic traffic.
Besides that, the Interior Ministry is set to inaugurate 770 projects ranging from public housing to waterworks to new public buildings by the end of the year – 62 percent of them will be ready before the August primaries.
The projects haven’t gone unnoticed. An Isonomia poll carried out early last month showed that 55 percent of the 2,000 respondents had seen some kind of public work in their neighbourhood. That figure rises to 81 percent in Buenos Aires City.
by BY JORGELINA DO ROSARIO
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