The Argentine government of ultraliberal Javier Milei announced Friday that it would auction more than 400 state-owned buildings in the country, sales it said would raise some $800 million.
The agency that manages state property “will auction more than 400 buildings and sell another 800 properties, with the sole aim of reducing unnecessary state spending,” presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni announced at a press conference.
These buildings have a total estimated value of 800 million dollars (740 million euros), he added.
Among the buildings targeted is the former Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity, one of the portfolios that Mr. Milei had eliminated shortly after his election in December, arguing for a long time that such a ministry was ‘useless.’ It became ‘an undersecretariat for Protection against Gender Violence,’ attached to the Ministry of Justice.
The building, located in the historic San Telmo neighborhood, is estimated at $12.5 million (pound 11.5 million), and “the ministry’s budget in 202
3, more than 54 billion pesos (pound 49 million) for 1,100 employees, did not seem to be enough to achieve the supposed gender equality,” the spokesperson said ironically.
The government also announced a decree banning what it called “hereditary jobs” in the civil service – in reality a practice of certain entities of giving preference or priority in recruitment, under certain conditions and in particular “aptitude”, to the parent of a deceased employee.
This was the case, for example, at the Central Bank, where preference was given to the spouse or child of a deceased employee when hiring, subject in particular to economic vulnerability linked to the death.
The standard, which comes from an old collective agreement, was removed in 2018 by a decree of the liberal government of Mauricio Macri, but the Bank’s board of directors reinstated it in 2022, under the center-left government of Alberto Fernandez.
The Milei government “is taking another step towards ending the Argentina of caste,” trumpeted the Minis
try of Deregulation and Transformation of the State, citing similar “inheritance” practices in the Customs, Tax, Social Security and Railway administrations, among others.
“These medieval remains of blood privilege (…) persist in the public sector,” denounced Minister Federico Sturzenegger, and “this is what President Milei has decided to eliminate.”
The government has not given an estimate of the number of “hereditary” jobs thus targeted.
Source: Burkina Information Agency