The General Coordinator of Primero Justicia (PJ, Justice First) in Lara State, Alfonso Marquina, denounced the confiscation of the constitutional status of State and local governments by Nicolás Maduro, who has classified oil income as extraordinary income, a practice contrary to what is established in the Constitution and the Organic Law of Budgetary Regime.
By La Patilla
Feb 8, 2023
Mr. Marquina explains that the oil revenues that the republic obtains each year are ordinary revenues, therefore, 20% must be deducted so that these are assigned to the States and Municipiae dictated in the “Situado Constitucional” (constitutional budget attribution).
In the case of Lara State, the elected to the 2015 National Assembly, also points out that 1,351,281,636 bolivars of oil revenue corresponded to Lara State and only 375,356,000 bolivars were budgeted.
Regarding the municipalities, where most of the mayors come from the opposition parties, such as Andrés Eloy Blanco, the leader of the this center left party, explained that of the 22,167,064 bolivars that corresponded to his municipium, were assigned barely 6,157,073.00 bolivars , while in the Torres municipality, run by Mayor Javier Oropeza, and which is territorially the largest in the state, out the mandated 40,551,073.00 bolivars, only were assigned the pyrrhic figure of 11,264,187.00 bolivars.
Marquina states that this situation is really serious, since the estimate of the exchange rate for this year is not even estimated in the 2023 budget, that is, there is no estimate of the value of the bolivar with respect to the dollar.
He points out that, according to what was assigned to this region, at the time the budget was formulated, in November 2022, the exchange rate was 8.59 bolivars per dollar, and those 375,356,000 bolivars were equivalent to 43,000,000.00 dollars, but at the current exchange rate today, this became just 17,000,000.00 dollars.
For the PJ coordinator, this situation “puts in check” the State and municipal governments that will not be able to carry out the budgeted plans as a result of the high inflationary index that turns the budget “into salt and water”.
On the other hand, he questioned the silence of governors and mayors, especially the two opposition mayors in Lara State, whom he called on to raise their voices and confront of the regime so that these funds can reach the entire population.
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