Minister of Economy: Will Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo come here to give jobs to people who lose their jobs because they stop extracting oil responsibly?

The mere creation of a study for the dismantling of the infrastructure of block 43-ITT (Ishpingo, Tambococha, Tiputini) for Petroecuador would take about three months, according to the Minister of Economy and Finance Pablo Arosemena, who warned that the president who will be elected next October 15 will have to answer how to compensate for the resources that will stop being received from those fields.

And that is that in a popular referendum, a majority of Ecuadorians voted to leave the crude oil underground, a decision welcomed by actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo, but according to officials, “they don’t know how it affects the country immensely.” .

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Arosemena indicated that approvals and confirmations from the Ministry of Environment will be required as part of the study, and that the cost of dismantling what Ecuador has invested around $2,000 million, according to Petroecuador’s calculations, is estimated between $500 and $600 million. “Just doing the study can take three months, to start the dismantling,” he repeated on the radio forever This Thursday, 24.8.

The minister emphasized that with the results of the consultation, “we are not crying over spilled milk here”, but that the next ruler will say that he will compensate the 1.2 billion dollars that are no longer considered for the budget. “They will compensate for it on the income side, on the expenditure side or make a combination of income and expenditure. When we talk about income, the (new) Government would have to tell us how much the taxes will rise, let’s say two points of VAT”.

He explained that in the current government it will not affect: “It does not affect at this moment, so we cannot decide on something that does not affect at this moment.” He believes that the debate on how these resources will be compensated is not only on a macro level, but also on a micro level, in Orellana, in Sucumbíos, in the directly affected communities.

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As an example, he stated that there are 400 people working in the drilling rig, and there are dozens of drilling rigs, but with the popular consultation there will be no more of them and there will be no oil infrastructure, so he wondered what will happen to the jobs there. “Will Leonardo DiCaprio come and will Mark Ruffalo give jobs to people who lost their jobs because they stopped extracting oil in an environmentally responsible way? I think that’s a question that the new ruler will have to answer.”

Likewise, he indicated that the argument that it has been presented at the international level that Ecuador is a benchmark for biodiversity after the results of this popular consultation or that it can bring economic benefits cannot be taken into account. “Honestly, I can’t see it from there. I understand that Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo are tweeting from other far away countries without really understanding the needs of Ecuadorians, especially those who live there, they may be very comfortably unaware of how it affects the country immensely.”

“The Ministry of Energy is concerned about the legal aspect” of the Yasuní consultation because in Orellana “it was decided to continue the exploitation of the field”

Considering how the accounts in the economic field will be for the new government, the minister said as a background that before the beginning of Guillermo Lasso’s mandate, there was a deficit of almost 8,000 million dollars and a public debt of more than 60,000 million dollars.

In this context, he indicated that they managed to reduce some 2,600 million dollars to almost 8,000 million dollars, and that the debt in relation to GDP was 61.5 percent in May 2021, and in December 2023 it will be 55 percent, and that they achieved it. for renegotiating debt with China last year and exchanging foreign debt for the preservation of the Galapagos Islands this year.

Questions and answers Elections 2023