Results of the "privatization" of the infrastructure

The demand of the corrupting Brazilian construction company Odebrecht against the Peruvian State for more than US $ 1,200 million may have surprised the majority of the population, but not the Peruvian authorities, known that the harmful Public-Private Partnership (PPP) contracts  crossed that possibility.

But those who have followed this blog (see for example the post here, and also the post), and who know the trends of the "privatization of infrastructure" proposed by Felix Rohatyn in the United States, with the justification of the "wise" tatcherites  and pinochetists of the Mont Pelerin Society, are not surprised.

Current trends in public infrastructure management point to a major failure:

I. Concentration of infrastructure in new “cities - state”, where most of the investment is centralized (Lima, in the Peruvian case, which already exceeds 10 million inhabitants), promoting for example massive real estate businesses;

II. Abandonment of the infrastructure that integrates the national and subregional space, with the consequent abandonment of the interior or the “periphery”, occupied by those “lamentables” voters to whom the dominant investment funds and their political and media operators can make invisible;

III. Emphasis on “alternative energy”, solar and wind, inefficient, and postponement of nuclear and hydroelectric power;

IV. Infrastructure concentration in geographic areas with export activities, euphemistically called “export chains”;

The decisions that have occurred in the last 3 years, with emphasis, support these trends:

A. PPK's rejection of the Brazil - Peru bioceanic rail connection that China offered to finance;

B. Trimming and delaying the Amazonian Hydrovia;

C. National Infrastructure Plan destructuring the national space;

D. Abandonment of public hydroelectric generation projects and prioritization of inefficient wind and solar sources;

E. Defense and prioritization of inoperative PPP schemes. (Also see another post here)

The privatization of infrastructure has already meant the collapse of public investment, with all its effect on the physical economy, in the midst of social rejection of the consequent high tariffs.

But there is no harm that lasts a hundred years.

02/07/20