Joaquín Rodríguez Freire Argentina’s provincial governors are meeting on Monday at 11 a.m. at the offices of the Federal Investment Council (CFI, by its Spanish initials) with the goal of renewing their list of demands to the national government and deepening the list of topics they discussed last week with Chief of Staff Guillermo Francos during the meeting at the Casa Rosada.
The summit is a continuation of the one held on June 3, also at the CFI, which led to the talks with Francos. The collapse of federal revenue-sharing, the provinces’ proposal to modify fuel tax, and the distribution of National Treasury Contributions (ATN) are on the agenda.
In the June meeting, leaders from across the country and from various political factions traveled to the city under the pretext of analyzing financing tools for infrastructure projects. However, they took the opportunity to share and discuss problems affecting their provinces, such as highway conditions and the drop in tax collection.
Francos: Milei’s envoy to the provinces
The meeting led to a request for an audience with President Javier Milei, which did not take place because he was departing on a trip to Europe and Israel. Instead, he delegated negotiations to Francos, his usual envoy to the provinces. As such, the parties met last Friday in the Casa Rosada’s Hall of Shields.
Francos received, along with his deputy Lisandro Catalán and Treasury Secretary Carlos Guberman, a delegation composed of Sergio Ziliotto (La Pampa), Claudio Vidal (Santa Cruz), Raúl Jalil (Catamarca), Ignacio Torres (Chubut), and Myrian Prunotto, Vice Governor of Córdoba — a small group that represented the country’s geography and political factions.
The provincial leaders raised a series of common concerns, including the need for fuel tax to “return to the provinces in the form of concrete projects.” They decried that in 2024, the federal government had executed less than 50% of the 28.5% of this tax allocated to the road infrastructure trust fund.
Francos welcomed that the governors valued the fiscal surplus, while noting that the provinces’ proposal was not unreasonable. At the same time, he referred to the context of political uncertainty opened by the ratification of the conviction against Cristina Kirchner in the Vialidad case. He planned to prepare a response for the next meeting with the governors.
Asked by the Herald’s sister title, Ámbito, various provinces said they still had not received an official response from the libertarian administration. The Casa Rosada stated that they were working on it, though nothing concrete has materialized yet.
Getting nothing in return
Río Negro governor Alberto Weretilneck harshly criticized the federal government over the state of highways, saying: “When we fill up our cars with gas, when a truck fills its tank, when a farmer fills a tractor’s tank, 50% of those values are taxes, and all those taxes are kept by the federal government. These taxes are intended for national highways. That’s the problem: they are keeping the money paid by the people of Río Negro, and they’re not getting it back in any form whatsoever.”
The province has offered three alternatives to the federal government, he added: “Provincialize the roads, and we’ll decide what maintenance to perform and how. Second, give us the maintenance operations. Third, make a decision, do something.” He also stated that they had received no response to these proposals. “Meanwhile, the deterioration, the loss of lives, the time delays, and the vehicle damage are severe. We have a government that does not take the interior of the country into account at all,” Weretilneck concluded.
Several bills to tackle these issues have been sent to Congress. One belongs to Sergio Leavy (Unión por la Patria, Salta) and proposes a redistribution scheme for the Liquid Fuels and Carbon Dioxide Tax, modifying Article 19 of Law 23.966 to allocate more resources to the provinces and Buenos Aires City.
Concerns over collapsing tax income
A report published last week by the Argentine Institute of Fiscal Analysis (IARAF) showed that there was a significant drop in revenue in May. “This is due to tax revenues falling in real terms by 14.5% (a 44% drop in income tax) year-over-year, and a 6% real year-over-year drop in non-tax revenues,” IARAF wrote.
In the first five months of 2024, the PAIS tax collected AR$4.7 trillion in constant currency, they added. That means that from an accumulated income surplus of AR$543.8 billion as of April (in May 2025 currency), there was a shift to a revenue shortfall of AR$1.288 trillion when considering the first five months of the year.
Regarding primary spending, the report recorded a real year-over-year drop of 2%. As a result, the May 2024 primary surplus of AR$3.346 trillion (in May 2025 pesos) became a primary surplus of ARS 1.696 trillion in May 2025 — a real drop of 49%. In other words, the reduction in the May primary surplus covered 93% of the drop in tax revenue.
