What to do with the ‘white elephants’ in Bolivia?

This type of unfinished works or without practical utility, are in several regions of the country. Their number has not been determined, nor has the total amount of spending they represented in the 14 years of the Government of Evo Morales (2006-2019), but there are dozens and so varied that, among the largest, there are airports in places without commercial demand, a museum dedicated to the former president, now closed; oversized stadiums in small municipalities and the headquarters of the Unasur Parliament, which never opened its doors.

The municipality of Copacabana, three hours from La Paz by car, is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Bolivia for having a beach next to Lake Titicaca, located 3,800 meters above sea level. Also for being on the border with Peru and for the sanctuary that houses the devotion to the virgin of the same name. An airport was built there, inoperative today, which only received its inaugural flight in 2018.

In a visit to the place, it was found that the air terminal is paralyzed, surrounded by a wire fence, with a two-kilometer runway that almost reaches the lake, but with its empty buildings.

The work required an investment of 6.5 million dollars and was inaugurated four years ago with a massive celebration in which Morales argued that tourists from the Peruvian cities of Cuzco and Juliaca wanted to fly to Copacabana, so the airport would work as if was international.

Its abandonment is the object of complaints from the neighbors closest to the airport, the Aymara peasants from Copacati, whose leader, Ángelica Mayta, asked President Arce for the planes to arrive, for any company to take charge of equipping the place and the installation of basic services is completed since there is now drinking water in the area.

In addition to the expectation for more tourists, Mayta claimed that the terminal is much needed to leave Copacabana when other community members block the road to La Paz and for medical emergencies, as was seen during the hardest stage of the pandemic, when they lost their relatives for not arriving soon at medical centers in La Paz.

For Professor Rodolfo Tarifa, “it is a white elephant because it has been years without use”, but it is still possible to dream of an air connection with Cuzco, thinking that visitors could then fly directly to the Salar de Uyuni (southwest), the great destination Bolivian tourist.

“There was an external shock and a lot of waste”

Opposition deputy Miguel Roca, who visited the airport and that Aymara community, said that evaluating as an economist and civil engineer, the investment of 6.5 million dollars for a two-kilometer runway and a small terminal was a budget ” exaggerated”, although he could see that “there is a good pavement”.

“The fact that this airport does not work is not for technical reasons. It is due to a bad commercial conception, because the system that the Government has managed for 15 years does not invest in pre-investment and feasibility. That is, no studies are done. Investments like this and other larger ones are made at the whim of some powerful official,” Roca protested, questioning a lack of coordination with the private sector of tour operators and airlines.

In addition, in the department of La Paz, the Amazonian terminals of Apolo and Ixiamas (northwest) have been without operations for years, which required expenses of 6.4 million and 6.2 million dollars, respectively, and in Chuquisaca (southeast) that of Monteagudo, of 7.2 million dollars.

Two emblematic works without functioning are the Museum of the Democratic and Cultural Revolution in Orinoca (west), the hometown of Evo Morales, dedicated to his history and the indigenous peoples, of 5.6 million dollars, and the seat of the Parliament of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), located in a rural town in Cochabamba, which demanded around 70 million dollars, but has never opened its doors since its inauguration in 2018.

Local media abound with reports of large stadiums in small towns and half-built bus terminals, citing an overgrown cattle confinement facility to the east and a racetrack and rodeo plaza to the south. They work once a year.

To summarize, Roca said that Morales received ten times more resources than his predecessors due to the high prices of raw materials such as gas “and he spent, he spent, but the worst thing is that he wasted.”

“There was an external shock and a lot of waste,” insisted Roca, for whom President Arce is also responsible for the policies applied by Morales because he was his Minister of Economy.

Government: it will not “stubbornly” enter into making something unprofitable work

Regarding the “white elephants” built in the previous administration, the Minister of Economy, Marcelo Montenegro, told the international media, including France 24, that professionally he sees “that a thorough evaluation of the allocation of resources has not been made and there You have to be careful with public resources.”

“You have to see the extent to which that investment is not lost. You have to evaluate, because you are also never going to stubbornly try to make something work that is not going to have its own profitability or operation by its own forces, ”said the minister after being asked if these works were going to be maintained in the current status or if there will be a plan to reactivate them.

Instead, Montenegro assured that all the works inaugurated in Arce’s administration are working and that the details of each one are analyzed with the economic cabinet and the president himself.

“And, surely, all those projects that he is going to inaugurate in the productive part are not going to have that problem because a very rigorous and detailed evaluation is being carried out so that no type of problem occurs related to an inefficient allocation, which in the end It has no use, nor a benefit for society”, reflected the senior official.

The State, he added, can enter with subsidies in areas such as transportation, as is the case in several countries around the world, “but where there are investments that cannot be sustainable, the decision will have to be made not to insist on it.”

Public investment has always been considered a key driver of the Bolivian economy and for this year it has been budgeted at 5,015 million dollars, of which 30% will go to infrastructure and 42.5% to the productive sector.

According to the minister, the logic of the new works is “to have a positive result for the population and for the country, economically.”