PARAGUAY AND ARGENTINA MEET IN EFFORT TO MAKE YACYRETA DAM FINANCIALLY VIABLE.
Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte met in Paraguay July 18 with Argentine President Nestor Kirchner to discuss the binational Yacyreta Dam. The two presidents sought to improve financial and corruption oversight on the project, while Duarte sought forgiveness for Paraguay's debts. They signed a memorandum setting up a commission with a 90-day deadline to form a plan to restructure the hydroelectric project's debts.
Paraguayans want debt forgiven
Paraguayan authorities hoped the meeting would result in an agreement to drop US$5 billion, nearly half the US$10.6 billion debt Paraguay owes the Argentine Treasury for the dam.
Paraguayan newspapers said Duarte had been left with his hands empty after Kirchner's visit, having failed to obtain the forgiveness of the US$5 billion, although Kirchner had apparently made prior indications to Paraguayan authorities that he intended to partially annul the debt.
After their meeting, Duarte said, "The definitive solution to the grave financing problems of Yacyreta is beginning to be made, beginning with this historic meeting and the signing of a serious commitment that in 90 days we expect [the solution] to materialize."
"Our debt for the construction of the hydroelectric [facility] would not have been so scandalously colossal if it hadn't been for reiterated irregularities and complicit silence, which today we are at last in the process of totally addressing," said Duarte.
"I celebrate that we have taken this step, studying the technical and administrative viability [of Yacyreta]," said Kirchner at the end of his brief trip, his first visit to Paraguay as president. He said he was committed to move forward a commission to investigate the reasons that the project has been held back for so many years and to name the individuals responsible for the "mechanisms of corruption."
The project on the Rio Parana, run by the Entidad Binacional Yacyreta (EBY), took more than twenty years to complete and since completion has struggled to produce at capacity (see NotiSur, 1998-07-10, 2000-03-03 and 2004-04-23). Its scandals have been so frequent that, in 1990, Argentine President Carlos Menem (1989-1999) called it "a monument to corruption." It is one of the largest engineering projects in Latin America.
The Argentine government hopes to have the dam produce 25% of the country's energy for consumption by the end of 2008. Currently it produces 14% of Argentina's power. Argentina consumes 98% of the 12,000 gigawatts...
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