( Posted in The Desk, May 16, 2008 )
There is some agreement that the municipalities are an ideal forum for the achievement of public policy, because they are an organization nearby public to the needs of citizens. However, the way they can achieve their objectives, it is similar for all groups. In our country, the financing of municipalities is an unresolved issue that causes much perception of abuse and injustice and, indeed, natural classification is common among rich and others poor municipalities. In the current scenario, it is obviously not an issue to be negligible because the level of responsibilities they face in areas as diverse as education or health, waste collection or repair of roads, etc..
If we consider that within the existing 345 municipalities, there a significant proportion-about 48% - which is below the national average of resources per capita, then the situation is not at all satisfactory. For example, Vitacura municipality with a population of 82 000 inhabitants, has a budget of over 31 billion pesos, instead Quillota, commune of the fifth region, with 83 thousand inhabitants, has a budget of 4 000 890 million pesos, or put another way, Vitacura being 6.3 times more than Quillota. And the latter must address three times the number of students that the community of the metropolitan area. In that same scenario and worse, there Alhué communes as in 2006 had no equity to make investments in its territory. These inequalities become a very complex problem, particularly in the case of poor communes, considering the very high amounts to be spent on education and health.
figures regarding municipal expenditure that can be analyzed from another angle in order to show how far we are from the development goals that we like to profess. Taken together, the municipalities manage financial resources constitute approximately 2.8% of GDP and only 13% of government spending in general. A far cry from what happens in European countries, in which the percentage local average is 43% of which is government spending. In Sweden, for example, the figure climbs to over 60%. For its part, South and Central America the average is 16.5%. In this regard Bolivia has a stake of 18.3%. Chile is far from these percentages, despite the political importance and relevance to publicly assigned to municipalities. Again, there is no agreement between what is postulated as of major importance and the resources available to do so.
And while it has developed tools that have allowed provide more resources to the municipalities, such as the Municipal Common Fund, it is not used in their full potential as it currently is 520 billion pesos approximately, which is wholly inadequate given the pressing needs they face, especially the poorest. In addition, the fund mainly comes from communal resources, for example, land tax and / or vehicle licenses, and very little central government, so it is a way to share the best distribute poverty or misery. Worse still, to this fund are commonly called rich-give-in percentages almost the same as poor communes, while the land tax all municipalities must spend 60%, Santiago, Providencia, Las Condes and Vitacura must contribute 65% . In terms of distribution This fund critics point to the lack of objective criteria and in accordance with the real vulnerability of communities.
Then, when questioned harshly acidic or municipal function or its results, it should consider the enormous responsibilities, functions and tasks to be met by municipalities, while the poor reception of resources, considering all of these - and the unimportance of municipal funds in relation to the central government's overall expenditure. In short, lasa decentralize responsibilities but not the resources available, which leads to the worst of all worlds since no one is ultimately responsible for meeting the needs of population. The government has the resources but not the responsibilities and the municipality has responsibilities but not resources. Result: frustration, poverty, injustice and central government as increasingly wealthy do not spend the proceeds of taxes and transfers that are public companies such as Codelco. At this point the lock is very clever in reducing or maintaining controlled spending. The problem is that so things are moving very little and inadequate educational, health or infrastructure are still procrastinating.
If we decentralize, is not enough that the central government to jettison its responsibilities, should also allocate resources to the municipalities to meet their obligations. Indeed, this is required by law. The development also involves, as we have seen, the greater availability of resources spent locally and not centrally.
Marcel Claude, an economist.
0 comments:
Post a Comment