Controversial Gold Law in Bolivia is approved in a new vote of deputies

The deputies of bolivian They approved this Saturday the controversial Gold Law project aimed at strengthening international reserves, in a new vote carried out after the heated session the day before in which the presidency of the Lower House approved the norm without having achieved a majority.

The standard was approvedin big” with 73 votes out of the 122 parliamentarians who attended the session called for this afternoon, in which there were also 45 rejection votes and 4 null ones.

After this new vote, the parliamentarians began the analysis of the project “in detail”.

This Saturday’s session was initially called to deal with “in detail“the aforementioned project after the president of the lower house, the official Jerges Mercado, approved it at his station”in big” after a first vote carried out on Friday, in which there were 54 votes in favor, 41 blank and 24 against.

The opposition parliamentarians and some pro-government supporters of the “avoided wing”, that is, those close to former President Evo Morales, criticized Mercado for having ignored the blank ballots to advance with the treatment of the project and warned against prosecuting him for violating the regulations of the Lower House.

Given this, the head of Deputies finally chose to repeat the vote on this day and resolved that it be “secretly”, that is, that each legislator casts his vote on a ballot, so that they are not “blackmailed”.

The project of Gold Law Its purpose is to strengthen the country’s Net International Reserves (NIR) through direct purchases from local producers and then convert them to foreign currency.

The last known report on the state of the NIRs is from February, when they stood at US$ 3.538 million, one of the lowest levels since 2014, when they reached 15.122 million.

Since then, the Central Bank of Bolivia (BCB) has not provided any further information on the status of the reserves.

Some of the observations to the project is that the Central Bank be given the power to sell the gold without the approval of the Legislative Assembly.

The Government admitted this week that it is “raffling” difficulties in the economy, for which the president of Bolivia, Luis Arce, has insisted on the importance of approving this and other bills.

The parliamentary session coincided with the “expanded cabinet”, a meeting of high government authorities chaired by Arce, in which the situation and the progress and challenges of management were analyzed.

At the meeting, the Bolivian Executive concluded that the “national and international right” seeks to shorten Arce’s term with a “offensive” that aims to generate anxiety and that “has as a center of attack” to the national economy.

Source: EFE