Recently, the Minister of Finance, Mario Marcel, rejected the idea of increasing the number of people who will benefit from subsidies in view of the imminent increase in electricity bills. “There are no resources,” argued the Secretary of State, which has been interpreted by local politicians as a rejection of the provision of extra aid to the millions of Chileans who will see a significant increase in electricity rates.
Regarding the increase in rates, the minister commented that “it is only possible to increase the subsidy if we have additional resources. In other words, if today there are no resources to finance an increase in the PGU (Guaranteed Universal Pension), if there are no resources to finance nurseries from the State, if there are no resources to finance a more aggressive reduction of waiting lists in hospitals, there would hardly be resources to expand the electricity subsidy,” declared the head of the fiscal portfolio.
Frank Sauerbaum, a member of the National Renewal Party (NRP) for Ñuble and a member of the Labor Commission, called on the government to cut spending to “focus on where it really matters to people who are currently under pressure from the rise in electricity prices.”
In this regard, and according to a human resources report from the Budget Directorate (Dipres), the parliamentarian for Ñuble revealed that only between March 2023 and the same month in 2024, the central government increased its staff of officials by more than 31 thousand officials. Hiring that translates into an annual cost for the Boric administration of US$1,041,602,987.
“Before telling Chileans that it does not have the resources to finance an electricity subsidy, the government must answer why it hired 31,000 people in the State last year at a cost of more than 1 billion dollars,” said Frank Sauerbaum, adding that “in these two and a half years of government, they have already brought 100,000 people to the State (…) many of them cronies of the Frente Amplio and the Communist Party.”
Along those lines, he called on the government to “make significant spending cuts to focus on where it really matters to people who are currently under pressure from the rise in electricity prices, not only the most deprived sectors, but also the middle class and small businesses.”
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