The Government is left empty, the Finance Commission does not endorse the expansion of the budget

2024-08-01 14:02:00

The Finance and Currency Commission responsible for dealing backwards with the ruling party by not issuing a favorable opinion to the initiative that sought to approve budget expansion. Bernardo Arévalo’s Government will have to look for a plan B if it wants to stick to its offers.

General overview. Only one vote received a favorable opinion regarding the budget expansion presented by the Executive, which amounted to GTQ 11,098M, some GTQ 3,000M less than the initiative submitted by the Ministry of Finance.

• Roman Castellanos, the only representative of the party in charge, did not want to vote, because he left the minutes of the meeting before the voting.
• The only vote in his favor was that of the deputy Julio Héctor Estrada, who is the chairman of the Finance Commission and was in charge of preparing the opinion.
• 11 deputies voted against him, among them, Luis Aguirre, from Cabal, Nadia de León, No; Duay Martínez, from Vamos; Álvaro Arzú, Unitarian; Alexandra Ajcip, from Elephant; among others.

What lies ahead. Although the favorable ruling was not achieved, the 12 signatures for the unfavorable ruling must still be collected and in this way “official” the decision of the working room.

• When the president of the commission was consulted, he said that “the important message during the meeting was that the favorable opinion was put to a vote and it did not receive the votes.”
• Regarding the unfavorable ruling, he considers that “it is not clear that the votes are there either. It also needs analysis and substantiation,” he asserted.
• However, Martínez and Ajcip suggested that the unfavorable ruling be made known at the next meeting to “document” the commission’s refusal to increase.

What to draw attention. One of the subjects that came to light during the discussion and caused criticism and even a warning to question the Minister of Finance, Jonathan Menkos, was the placement of bonds for USD 1,400M.

• With this amount they “reached the ceiling available for issuing bonds,” they said.
• “Enough cash balances to be available […] USD 1400M Eurobond launched […] and on July 30, achieving what they had authorized […] The finances went ahead and without a technical reason,” Estrada explained.
• Arzú said that it was urgent to call the official to give reasons for the decision and if the explanation was not satisfactory, then “it was necessary to intercede, since it is an irresponsible waste of resources.”

you The head of the Unitarian bench indicated that there is a group of deputies who are asking – through a motion – that the issue be exempted from ruling in the plenary session, because they know they do not have the votes in the Finance Commission.

• “Here comes the political part; “What they want is an expansion of the budget so that they have left a budget without a lock and the 2025 budget has not been approved (…) there are mediations and they cannot be interrupted unless there are problems with constitutional deadlines,” said he. .

Done. Although the ruling party would like to take advantage of the fact that the opinion has not been signed to bring the discussion on the expansion to the plenary session, it is clear that they do not have the 107 votes necessary for approval.

• What remains for them is to formulate the 2025 budget project according to tax revenue; They are already racing against the clock, as the delivery date is September 2nd.