“We should have a four-lane Route 40”

After the publication of HUARPE DIARY in which neighbors of Iglesia warned that 20 years of mining did not generate greater social equity or infrastructure works that improve their daily lives, Mario Hernández, sustainability manager of Los Azules, pointed to politics and said that “with royalties, Route 40 should have four lanes.” The former president of the Mining Chamber stressed that “we are discussing the 1% that falls to the Church and I wonder where the other 54% that is distributed between the Nation and the Province went.”

Hernández said that “mining pays taxes on 55% of sales and we are discussing the 1% that goes to the Church, but I wonder, where did the other 54% that corresponds to the Nation and Province go? I think that the current panorama has a lot to do with the fact that there are no long-term policies and that we only think about covering potholes or being on top of the situation.”

The former president of the Mining Chamber went deeper by saying that “when the previous structure was in place, in which a fuel tax was generated for the industry, companies for every 1,000,000 liters had to pay 119,000 liters as part of a fund for the maintenance and improvement of productive routes. The last calculation we did tells us that Route 40 should be four lanes and clearly that did not happen, taking into account that all the gold bars from San Juan left there and it is still the same route.” Hernández also emphasized that “Route 40 is the country’s quintessential productive route and despite this, no one ever did anything, except for some sections, everything remains the same as decades ago.”

“Companies pay the corresponding taxes, but that does not make them responsible for what is done with those funds and whether they are invested in the Church or in Buenos Aires,” said the Los Azules sustainability manager, later stating that “they always criticizes the one who pays and not the one who spends.”

When asked where these monies are, Hernández stated that “a large part went to the Nation and we did not know anything else, even in all the opportunities we had, from the Chamber, we raised these needs to the Ministers of Infrastructure of all administrations. and everything was left in a note that was lost in a notebook.” Given this panorama, Hernández said that “it is essential that for what is coming in San Juan we have good routes and good railway infrastructure so that copper is a more profitable business that allows the arrival of more investments to the Province.”

Is RIGI the solution for mining?

Hernández celebrated the progress of the Large Investment Incentive Regime (RIGI), but warned that it is not the only tool that the mining industry needs so that large investments are sustained in San Juan.

In this sense, he explained that “the industry must improve trust and that is done by maintaining the laws as happens in other countries. Defining the framework and sustaining it for 30 years, for an industry that manages long deadlines, is precisely the positive thing that the RIGI proposes.”

But, the former president of the Mining Chamber clarified that “the State is not only the RIGI, since it must also be in charge of the infrastructure to sustain investments, because to export the raw material, such as copper, an infrastructure is needed. important that we should already be developing in the country.”