Businessman Camilo Lluberes denounced a loan promoted by the Ministry of Agriculture for the construction of cold storage warehouses and a public market, saying it covers up a 153% overvaluation. He said an American company is offering the same thing for US$10 million less. In Hoy newspaper’s Sunday economic section, Lluberes says the project could be built for half the cost if offers by Taiwan and US companies were chosen instead of a Spanish offer. He called it gross economic fraud. Lluberes also denounced irregularities with a little known foundation concerning a US$30 million donation for the construction of high tech hospitals that requires the government to make a US$10 million payment and pay for the feasibility study of the donation. “That proposal is so ridiculous you do not even see it in the most backward countries of the planet. Why doesn’t the government request that they donate US$20 million instead,” he commented. Lluberes questions whether the government will have the discipline to use the US$500 million from the sovereign bonds for public works construction because of the “hefty current debts that have been accumulating.” He also criticized as irresponsible the fact that the government would be undertaking a loan of US$450 million in addition to the bonds, of which 44.4% would go to finance the so-called Social Package “that has nothing productive about it”. US$250 million will go to questionable and overvalued projects that could only have developed in infantile minds, he says. “Those are pure adventures of brokers that care very little about the country and only are thinking of the money they will collect.”
