Comptroller: 2,369 paralyzed works for more than S / 22,453 million throughout the country

The Comptroller of the Republic, Nelson Shack, reported that there are 2,369 paralyzed works at the national level due to processes linked to ongoing investigations, of which 85 are framed in Emergency Decree No. 008-2019, which two years ago sought to reactivate stopped works to close gaps in infrastructure and improve services for the population.

In his presentation before the Special Multiparty Commission for Investment in Congress, Shack explained that these 85 works maintain an updated cost of 680 million 502,253 soles; while, the 2,284 works excluded from the decree, reach the sum of 21,772 million 791,816 soles. In total, it is 22,453 million 294,069 soles.

“There are works that are 90% complete and for 10% they have been paralyzed (…) Many of these works are due to serious problems of corruption and then nobody wants to prioritize them. But for that you need a legal framework. For example, if the work is in arbitration, how do I intervene?

“As you know, this is an election year. At the end of the year, all the local and regional authorities will change, and it is most likely that we will have a lot of paralyzed works for the next four months of the year, because the priorities will change”, added the comptroller.

In the same way, he maintained that, at the governmental level, local governments concentrate the largest number of paralyzed works, while regional governments account for the largest amount of investment involved, especially by Chavimochic and Majes Siguas II.

Thus, local governments maintain 1,714 paralyzed works, for 6,449 million 642,153 soles; regional governments 276, for 12,287 million 409,995 soles; and the central government 379, for 3,716 million 241,920 soles. At this point, he pointed out the difficulties to reactivate a work stopped for corruption.

“Many of the infrastructure areas in regional and local governments lack basic technical and legal capacities. The contracts have a lot of complexities and the companies beat the State at the table. There are contracting companies with more lawyers than engineers, because the process for defrauding them is already known,” he said.

Shack explained that, of the 443 works identified by the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) and the Comptroller in 2019, and which passed through the Invest PE filter until they were reduced to 162 for prioritization, 61 are still paralyzed.

“In practical life, this emergency decree has only been applied to resolve about 100 works,” he stressed.

Comptroller: clean up to unblock

On the other hand, Comptroller Nelson Shack noted that, in addition to corruption, another of the main problems in the stoppage of works is the lack of availability of cleared land to develop the project.

In this sense, he indicated that there is an enormous amount of corruption and functional misconduct around works in Peru, but that “they will not be resolved if the incentives are not changed”, which go through improving the capacity of the technicians and carrying out sanctions. .

Mining activity in the north of the country generated S/ 671 million during 2021

“How is the play? It’s very easy: I’m an entrepreneur, I’m a builder. I know that the technical file is poorly done, if they are all poorly done? However, I apply and win. And I fell to the floor. Why? Because I know that all that and more, including what I have bribed, I will recover in the execution process, “he said.

“I estimate that less than 1% of the more than 6,700 officials investigated by the Comptroller in 2020 have been sanctioned, that is, they continue to do harm. If we do this exercise for the 8,081 of 2019, the figure rises to no more than 2% or 3%. Impunity is the main problem, even beyond corruption. If there is no effective sanction, nothing is going to work”, he sentenced.