President Javier Milei’s government has halved the amount of emergency aid assigned to Bahía Blanca in the wake of torrential storms last March – just days after winning the backing of voters in the southern Buenos Aires Province city.
In September 7 elections for the provincial legislature, Milei’s La Libertad Avanza party won 46.1 percent of the vote in Bahía Blanca – a rare success for the ruling party in the region, which overall lost heavily to the opposition Peronist front.
Voters, however, aren’t to be rewarded for that choice. In a measure published in the Official Gazette last week, the Milei administration slashed the size of its special emergency aid fund for Bahía Blanca from 200 billion pesos to 100 billion pesos.
The measure not only hits families still awaiting aid, but will also affect infrastructure works to repair flood damage.
The initial amount had been designated by the head of state via Decree 238/25 in the wake of the deadly flooding, which left 18 people dead.
The cutback was confirmed in a report by the congressional budget office signed by Cabinet Chief Guillermo Francos and Economy Minister Luis Caputo.
The measure was made public a few days after the elections, which has upset some in the region.
On March 7, Bahía Blanca suffered one of the most devastating storms in its recent history. In less than eight hours, over 400 millimetres of rain fell – double the annual average. – and caused the death of at least 20 people and left thousands affected.
The torrent of water overflowed streams, tore down bridges and swept away everything in its path, leaving cars piled up, homes and hospitals in ruins. More than 1,000 people were evacuated with around 20 deaths. Two young girls, whose bodies were found weeks later, were among the dead.
Local authorities estimated the damages at around US$400 million. In light of the scale of the disaster, the federal government declared three days of national mourning and deployed the Army to assist with relief efforts. Milei visited the affected area five days after the catastrophe, amid mounting criticism over the delay.
This is not the first time that the Executive Branch had moved to trim funds for the storm-hit city. Back in June, President Milei vetoed a law approved by both chambers of Congress that would create a 200-billion-peso fund to rebuild the city’s infrastructure works and supply direct and indirect subsidies for affected families.
At the time, the government argued there was already a decree allocating resources for the emergency.
“With the measures adopted to enforce the provisions of Decree 238/25 there has been a reconstruction task rendering financial aid unnecessary as proposed by the sanctioned bill, within a context of budgetary hardship as the current emergency,” reads the text with which Casa Rosada justified the cutback.
The cutback comes at a time of high political and social sensitivity, where aid promises begin to dilute in the face of the fiscal adjustment policy the government is still championing.
– TIMES/PERFIL
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