According to a report by the National Audit Office (AGN, for its acronym in Spanish), the Ministry of Tourism did not evaluate or quantify the carrying capacity of National Parks. This concept determines the need for there to be a limit of visitors that can receive a tourist center so that its facilities are not exceeded.

The control agency came to that conclusion after detecting "problems related to the proper management of the tourist load" in the Patagonia Regional Delegation, especially in the concentration of visitors, and the lack of investment and design of trails and camp sites.

"The load capacity is not estimated, nor is there any methodology for this purpose," said the report, approved in November of last year on data from 2005 to 2007, and recommends "revaluing" the management plans of the National Parks for Accommodate current tourist use. The AGN referred to the increase in activity since 2002, with a record 3.3 million foreign visitors in 2004 and the increase in other variables, such as average daily per capita expenditure and average stay.

Irregularities were also found in the Quebrada de Humahuaca, Jujuy. There, in addition to not estimating the tourist load capacity, the Watchdog was not able to access any environmental management plan. "There are also no disposal centers for solid urban waste," says the Audit. Using only the most elementary logic, the picture is less encouraging: more tourists, more tons generated and untreated, just in arid ecosystems, which are more vulnerable to "anthropic impact" and have no capacity for absorption.

On the other hand, the Secretariat has a Federal Strategic Plan for Sustainable Tourism, which, however, "does not have an approving administrative act". That act, according to Decree 1297 of 2006 "should have hierarchy of Resolution" of Tourism, details the AGN.

Among the purposes of the Plan is to "achieve a better quality of life for the inhabitants of the country, guaranteeing respect for the culture, identity and values ​​of the host communities" of tourists, but the control body assured that the strategy "does not Provides for how to measure the degree of compliance with that objective." Likewise, the report adds that "in the overall formulation of the Plan, the different sectors that make up sustainable tourism activity were not represented qualitatively or quantitatively."

The AGN adds that the Strategic Plan has a "federal" characteristic that supposes a degree of interaction between the different spheres of administration, national, provincial and municipal, that was not reflected in the verifications made by the auditors. At the institutional level, the coordination of tourism development projects has another obstacle: the delay in setting up an Interministerial Tourism Facilitation Committee that articulates the actions foreseen in the Plan and the different public entities with competencies related to the activity.