Five parties of the emergency committee, selected by the Congressional Assembly to monitor the spending of $2 billion dollars, have renounced their positions and are claiming that the government is not being transparent in its spending to combat the pandemic. Omar Serrano, a representative of the Central American University (UCA), details the complaints that civil society members have against the committee: that the government ignored them while making key decisions. The committee, he alleges, is unable to guarantee transparent management and disbursement of the emergency funds.
Omar Serrano is vice rector of social work at the José Simeón Cañas Central American University (UCA) and, since May 11, has represented UCA in an emergency committee, created on March 26 by a decree of the Legislative Assembly to oversee and manage the Extraordinary Budget of $2 billion dollars in response to the pandemic. The emergency committee is made up of five ministers (of Finance, Health, Public Works, Economy, and Tourism), the private secretary of the president, and five representatives of civil society—from universities and the private business sector. The committee's mission is to ensure that the funds were managed responsibly and transparently.
And yet, a little more than a month after its founding, the representatives from UCA, from the School of Business and Economics (ESEN), the National Association of Private Business (ANEP), the Chamber of Commerce, and the Salvadoran Foundation for Economic and Social Development (FUSADES) presented their resignation to the President and the Legislative Assembly claiming lack of transparency in the use of public funds. Along with his colleagues, Serrano affirmed that the committee was useless as the government had decided from the beginning to make unilateral decisions, block access to information, and refrain from consulting the other representatives in their decisions to distribute funds, as required by law.
'We joined the committee with the intention of doing everything with as much transparency as possible, so that the decisions over the distribution of funds were adopted with technical rigor. We cannot complete these goals without information,' Serrano said.
Since his swearing in, on March 27, Serrano claims that the government marginalized [the committee] in decisions involving the emergency funds. For example, the law specified that the committee would be responsible with creating the program of monetary transfers to vulnerable households, including the creation of a rubric for selecting the households eligible for receiving the assistance. On the night that committee members were sworn in, the president announced the delivery of $300 dollars to 1.5 million families. Three days later the committee had their first meeting. 'We had nothing to do with the strategy or the implementation of that delivery. Nor did we have responsibility for the crowds gathered at the Ministry of Economy.' Serrano maintains that they can't be held responsible for decisions that the Government has taken without consulting the committee, and that they acknowledge the risks of the Auditing Court holding them accountable for managing public funds.
The emergency fund itself has not yet actually been created, but money from it is already being spent by the government. 'We didn't join the supervisory committee of the $2 billion emergency dollars,' Serrano said, 'so that the committee could just be an adornment.'
The decree established that the committee had the power to administer the 2 billion fund.
The decree attributes powers to the committee, but the committee did not have the necessary tools to fulfill them. According to the decree, the committee is responsible for the direction and the administration of the funds. It was impossible, and since the first meeting on March 30, we raised these drawbacks of the decree. All 11 committee members agreed. We decided to develop a reform proposal to make it more realistic and thus limit functions. We also proposed it to detach ourselves from the design, implementation and definition of the criteria for the beneficiaries of the $ 300, because we never had any involvement in that.
What did you ask the Court of Accounts for, and what did they say?
We asked for management methodology for how to give out the $300 to families. We also asked for a report on the management of the $2 billion. We received explanations informally. We never received a document on fund management. They never gave us written information.
The decree assigned the committee the responsibility of preparing the Extraordinary Budget.
The Assembly assigned us the responsibility of preparing the extraordinary budget with those $2 billion, because this is extra money to the 2020 Budget. That was the fundamental function of the committee: to define destinations, allocate resources and do it with the maximum possible transparency. We could not accomplish that end without information. The committee and the presence of the UCA there no longer made sense. We could not meet the objectives: guarantee that the money reaches the beneficiaries established by the decree and guarantee that everything was done as transparently as possible. We never had access to reports. Nor could we guarantee that the allocations of funds were made with rigor and technical evidence, because those decisions were not made in the committee and were being made elsewhere.
Do you consider that the Government may not have any plan and that the answer is that they are improvising all the actions?
There's two options here: they do not give the information because they do not have it or because they do not want to deliver that information. I understand that in an emergency one reacts , but, for example, the plan we asked for, the route, we were never given. I really don't know if they have it. One understands that in an emergency you have to react, but you must be clear about where you are going.
In conclusion, that exhausted the committee.
The problem was that the fundamental decisions of the emergency were not made in the committee. That is the underlying problem.
If decisions were not made in the committee, where were these decisions made?
I only know that they were not made by the committee. I got the impression that some of the committee members on the government side also didn't know. This lack of information highlights that the emergency is not being responded to in a coordinated way by the government.
What was the alternative they proposed before deciding to leave?
We proposed a reform to decree 608, from March 26, which approved the $2 billion and that created the committee. There was unanimous consensus in the proposal that dealt with the powers of the committee. The committee had a consultative and proactive role. The committee's tasks did not decrease, but the responsibilities did. We were going to propose mechanisms for allocating funds, from what remained of the $2 billion. We were going to propose criteria of use for the national government and local governments. By consensus, we prepared this proposal and on April 22 we reached, after several meetings, that consensus for the Government to present a reform proposal to the Legislative Assembly.
What else did the committee propose in the reform you sent to the Assembly?
We proposed terms of reference for external audits to the management of funds. They listened, we had the proposal there, and they did not agree. We also proposed criteria for how the central government and the local governments could use the funds, but there was no agreement.
Were you told what the Government's plan was to deal with the emergency?
We asked to know what the Government thought and what its strategy was. They never released that information. If this pandemic is a health emergency, Security is not who's supposed to manage the purse strings. It's Health. We asked Health for plans and the minister gave us a presentation of the phases, which are the same ones that President Bukele repeated on national TV. When we asked how much money they would need for that and what the money was going to be used for, they never answered. It also happened with the Minister of Finance.
On the committee there were representatives of ANEP and the Chamber of Commerce who negotiated the proposal for bailouts of micro, small and medium-sized businesses for $ 1 billion. They also resigned along with the UCA. Did you ever discuss this agreement when preparing the letters?
We did not discuss it. We did not want to, because that was a bilateral negotiation between the private sector and the Government, which had nothing to do with the committee. We did know when we met the proposed decree, but we did not want to make it more complex. We were not going to have responsibility over that $1 billion agreed to between the Government and the private sector. The committee's responsibility was limited to the $ 2 billion they approved on March 26.
One of the committee's responsibilities was to define the audit and financial management mechanisms. To date, formally, how much money has entered the goal of $2 billion in loans?
The only thing that has formally entered the $2 billion count is that approved by the IMF: $389 million. Hence, there is nothing. The JICA fund and other funds are not related. They are separate.
Although no money has entered the $ 2billion fund, is that money already committed or spent by the government?
The problem is that the decree says that a part of the $2 billion is for the budget deficit. If the government spends $ 450 million from a revenue source to distribute $ 300, they must be repaid. If the government has spent $60 million on medical supplies, they must be replaced from the $2 billion fund. The government mentions the Cifco hospital ... that comes from the fund. We were explicitly told that. They have managed $70 million dollars. The committee did not dictate that. The government said 'I already spent on this and this.' The least we could do was ask for invoices or receipts. But we didn't get to that, because we were never told what money was coming in.
