Empty Community Pots and Unutilized Resources: A Management Problem?

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By Al­helí González Cáceres *

In the ar­ti­cle “Food Cri­sis, Fight­ing Hunger in the Baña­dos and the Scarce Gov­ern­men­tal Sup­port,” I con­tex­tu­al­ized the food cri­sis af­fect­ing a large part of the Paraguayan pop­u­la­tion. The fo­cus was on the “Pykuí” Com­mu­nity Pot Co­or­di­na­tion that emerged in Bañado Sur, as it was the or­ga­ni­za­tion that led the de­sign of Law No. 6.945/​2022, which cre­ated the “Sup­port Pro­gram for Din­ing Halls and Com­mu­nity Cen­ters” (here­after PACC).

As pointed out in the afore­men­tioned ar­ti­cle, the food cri­sis is a prob­lem that has been es­ca­lat­ing since at least 2018, al­though it deep­ened and be­came more vis­i­ble in the con­text of the pan­demic. Table 1 shows the in­crease in the num­ber of peo­ple at­tend­ing com­mu­nity din­ing halls un­der the Sup­port Pro­gram for Com­mu­nity Or­ga­ni­za­tion Din­ing Halls (PA­COC), a pro­gram of the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment (MDS) for man­ag­ing food as­sis­tance be­fore the pan­demic. While the data are alarm­ing, they do not fully re­flect the mag­ni­tude of the prob­lem, as not all eco­nom­i­cally vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions are as­sisted by the com­mu­nity din­ing halls de­ployed through­out the coun­try.

As can be seen, be­tween 2018 and 2021 alone, the num­ber of peo­ple ben­e­fit­ing from com­mu­nity din­ing halls in­creased 24-fold, reach­ing 210,706 peo­ple served dur­ing the pan­demic. By Sep­tem­ber 2022, the fig­ure dropped to 90,814 peo­ple as­sisted.

Fig­ure 1. Ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the Sup­port Pro­gram for Com­mu­nity Or­ga­ni­za­tion Din­ing Halls be­tween 2018-2022

Source: Own elab­o­ra­tion based on data pro­vided by PA­COC of MDS through a re­quest via the pub­lic ac­cess to the in­for­ma­tion por­tal, with Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion No. 62349, made in No­vem­ber 2022. The 2022 data are only up to Sep­tem­ber of that year.

The pre­vi­ous graph shows the deep­en­ing of the food cri­sis in the coun­try, data that were also pre­sented in the re­port by INE (2022), which in­cludes find­ings from the Ap­pli­ca­tion of the Food In­se­cu­rity Ex­pe­ri­ence Scale (FIES) in Paraguay to il­lus­trate the com­plex­ity of the food cri­sis.

Now let’s delve into the bud­get man­age­ment of the MDS. The Bud­getary Clas­si­fier of In­come, Ex­penses, and Fi­nanc­ing for Fis­cal Year 2023 es­tab­lishes that ex­penses are clas­si­fied ac­cord­ing to their pur­pose, based on the ob­ject or na­ture of the goods and ser­vices that the Gov­ern­ment ac­quires to de­velop its ac­tiv­i­ties. There­fore, the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of ex­pen­di­ture ac­counts for the des­ti­na­tion of the re­sources avail­able to in­sti­tu­tions, whether they re­fer to con­sump­tion, trans­fers, or in­vest­ment.

Table 1 pre­sents two groups of ex­penses, the first re­lated to ob­ject 300 Goods for Con­sump­tion and In­puts, and the sec­ond, ob­ject 800 Trans­fers, which in­cludes re­sources for the pay­ment of Sub­si­dies and So­cial As­sis­tance to Peo­ple and Fam­i­lies in the pri­vate sec­tor. These two groups are di­rectly re­lated to the mis­sion of the MDS.

The pur­pose is to com­pare the bud­get ex­e­cu­tion of groups 300 and 800, with the ex­pen­di­ture of group 100 re­lated to Per­sonal Ser­vices, from which sub­group 110 Ba­sic Re­mu­ner­a­tions is taken. This com­par­i­son al­lows us to eval­u­ate the ex­e­cu­tion of an ex­pense where there is po­lit­i­cal will to ex­e­cute (110 re­mu­ner­a­tions), with oth­ers (from groups 300 and 800) that re­quire, in ad­di­tion to will, ca­pac­ity, sen­si­tiv­ity, man­age­ment of in­tra- and in­ter-in­sti­tu­tional ar­tic­u­la­tions, among oth­ers. Need­less to say, as cit­i­zens, we would ex­pect the ex­e­cu­tion lev­els to be, at least, sim­i­lar.

In a coun­try his­tor­i­cally char­ac­ter­ized by in­sti­tu­tional weak­ness, cor­rup­tion, lim­ited pub­lic re­sources, and im­mense so­cial needs to guar­an­tee, all pos­si­ble cit­i­zen con­trol should be fo­cused on stop­ping and re­duc­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties of mis­man­age­ment of pub­lic funds.

How­ever, the re­sults of the com­par­i­son paint a dif­fer­ent pic­ture. Those ex­penses cor­re­spond­ing to re­mu­ner­a­tions have been the most ex­e­cuted, by far. Mean­while, those re­sources des­tined for the mis­sion ac­tiv­i­ties of the MDS, such as the ac­qui­si­tion of food in­puts and sub­si­dies to vul­ner­a­ble groups, are the least ex­e­cuted.

Table 1. Budget Execution by Expense Object for the years 2019 to October 2022 corresponding to the Social Management Program

Source: Own elab­o­ra­tion based on in­for­ma­tion sent by the MDS, ac­cord­ing to re­quest No. 62.353

That the ex­e­cu­tion of the bud­get re­lated to re­mu­ner­a­tions is high is not new. The ful­fill­ment of salary pay­ments oc­curs be­cause there is pres­sure from the staff to be paid on time and prop­erly, as it should be. Also, the ex­ec­u­tive lev­els and the high­est in­sti­tu­tional au­thor­i­ties have aligned in­cen­tives for this to hap­pen. If there are prob­lems with salary pay­ments, it af­fects the in­sti­tu­tion and could even lead to in­sta­bil­ity in the po­si­tions of the ex­ec­u­tives.

Now, what hap­pens when it’s not about salaries? The ex­e­cu­tion is much lower, as shown by items 300 and 800 in Table 1.

Let’s move on to a sec­ond point of in­ter­est, the Sup­port Pro­gram for Din­ing Halls and Com­mu­nity Cen­ters (PACC), cre­ated in 2022 to al­le­vi­ate the food cri­sis in the coun­try. It has one of the low­est ex­e­cu­tions of all pro­grams man­aged by the MDS. Table 2 shows the bud­get ex­e­cu­tion by ex­pense ob­ject. As can be seen, the ex­e­cu­tion of the re­sources al­lo­cated for the ac­qui­si­tion of food in­puts con­tem­plated in ob­jects 300 and 310 was 5%, with the to­tal bud­get ex­e­cu­tion of the pro­gram be­ing just 14% by De­cem­ber 2022. De­spite con­tin­u­ous com­plaints from com­mu­nity pots and other com­mu­nity ar­tic­u­la­tions ben­e­fited from the pro­gram.

Table 3. Bud­get Ex­e­cu­tion by Ex­pense Ob­ject of the Sup­port Pro­gram for Din­ing Halls and Com­mu­nity Cen­ters as of De­cem­ber 2022

Source: In­for­ma­tion pro­vided by the MDS in re­sponse to the re­quest made through the pub­lic ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion por­tal ID 62.349.

The data col­lected and pre­sented in the pre­ced­ing table sug­gest in­ef­fi­ciency re­gard­ing the re­al­iza­tion of pub­lic pur­chases of food in­puts, in­vest­ment in in­fra­struc­ture for tem­po­rary din­ing halls, and even in in­ter-in­sti­tu­tional ar­tic­u­la­tion to ac­quire food in­puts from fam­ily agri­cul­ture as es­tab­lished by law. This is re­in­forced by the fact that, af­ter the pro­mul­ga­tion of the PACC law, be­tween June and De­cem­ber 2022, there were only two calls for the ac­qui­si­tion of milk and gro­ceries for din­ing halls as­sisted by the MDS, and in nei­ther of them were the to­tal fi­nan­cial trans­fers made, de­spite the grow­ing need for in­puts af­fect­ing the com­mu­nity pot co­or­di­na­tion.

In this re­gard, it should be noted that the first call, with iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­ber ID 412613, dated June 21, 2022, was for a to­tal awarded amount of Gs. 5,499,990,800, as de­tailed in Ten­der 412613 on the por­tal of the Na­tional Di­rec­torate of Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment (DNCP). The sec­ond, car­ried out in No­vem­ber 2022 ID 419041, for the ac­qui­si­tion of gro­ceries for din­ing halls and com­mu­nity cen­ters, was for an amount of Gs. 5,480,852,000, as seen in Ten­der 419041.

In the 419041 call, Grupo Bel­mac S.A. was awarded Gs. 4,612,300,000, fol­lowed by Con­sor­cio Cen­tral, with an amount of Gs. 406,640,000, to sup­ply food prod­ucts. Grupo Bel­mac S.A. has al­ready re­ceived dis­burse­ments of Gs. 1,539,734,701. Mean­while, the other sup­pli­ers awarded in the call have not yet re­ceived any trans­fers from the MDS, which can be ver­i­fied on the DNCP por­tal, in the link cor­re­spond­ing to the MDS Ten­ders as of De­cem­ber 2022. Ad­di­tion­ally, in the months of 2023, the MDS has not made any calls to ac­quire food prod­ucts, de­spite the on­go­ing com­plaints from the com­mu­nity pots.

It is im­por­tant to note that, in the re­quest made to the Min­istry of Fi­nance (MH) via the pub­lic ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion por­tal with ID 72.625 about the de­tails of the fi­nan­cial trans­fers made to the MDS, the MH stated through Mem­o­ran­dum DGTP No. 241/​2023 and Note N.D.O. No. 185/​2023, that it had trans­ferred the to­tal bud­geted re­sources to the PACC for 2022 and, as of the date of the re­quest, had trans­ferred 950,988,000 Guarani of the bud­geted for 2023.

In sum­mary, in 2022, the MH trans­ferred the to­tal bud­geted re­sources so that the MDS could pro­vide the din­ing halls and com­mu­nity cen­ters with the food in­puts es­tab­lished by law. How­ever, the MDS did not ex­e­cute a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the funds. The re­sult is that the pots re­main empty. Why?

In con­clu­sion, as of the date of this ar­ti­cle’s pre­sen­ta­tion, the MDS has not made trans­fers cor­re­spond­ing to the pay­ment of the only two ten­ders car­ried out to ac­quire food in­puts in 2022. It re­mains to ex­plore the cause of this, whether it is due to in­ef­fi­ciency in man­age­ment, in­suf­fi­cient in­sti­tu­tional will, or prob­lems of an­other na­ture re­gard­ing the care of pub­lic funds. Ul­ti­mately, in a coun­try his­tor­i­cally char­ac­ter­ized by in­sti­tu­tional weak­ness, cor­rup­tion, lim­ited pub­lic re­sources, and im­mense so­cial needs to guar­an­tee, all pos­si­ble cit­i­zen con­trol should be fo­cused on stop­ping and re­duc­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties of mis­man­age­ment of pub­lic funds.

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*Ph.D. (can­di­date) in Eco­nom­ics, at the In­sti­tute of In­dus­try, UNGS, Ar­gentina. She holds a Mas­ter’s De­gree in So­cial Sci­ences with a Men­tion in Re­search and So­cial De­vel­op­ment from FLACSO Paraguay. Econ­o­mist, FCE – UPR, Cuba.

This study was con­ducted as part of the ini­tia­tive “Youth Con­trol for Bet­ter Pub­lic Man­age­ment,” pro­moted by the In­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary Cen­ter for So­cial Re­search (CIIS) with the sup­port of CIRD, within the frame­work of the More Cit­i­zen­ship, Less Cor­rup­tion pro­ject.

Cover Im­age: Roberto Go­i­riz