There are infrastructure works to prevent floods that "registered a delay of up to four years," according to a report by the National Audit Office (AGN), which evaluated the use of the funds of the Water Infrastructure Trust (FIH) for five years , Between 2008 and 2012.

The Secretariat of Water Resources (SSRH) is the national authority in this area and, as such, is responsible for the Federal Flood Control Plan whose objective is "to generate infrastructure works in all the country's jurisdictions to reduce the frequency Of floods and thus protect the roads, railways, urban centers and productive areas."

The Plan is financed with the Trust and the work is carried out through two modalities: those that are "fully directed and controlled by the national State through the under secretariat" and those "given by agreements with the provinces that request the financing, but with the control of the SSRH."

The Santa Fe Master Plan, for example, started in May 2007 and was due to finish in April 2010. However, as the audit team found, "it took more than four years to finalize the work, which meant a temporary diversion of 147%."

There were also works that despite having approved increases in the terms of completion of work, also recorded years of delay. It is the Case of the South Corrientes Defense, which was made through an agreement with the Province. The start date of the work "was March 2001, was to end in March 2002, but an extension agreed with the under secretariat of Water Resources extended the deadline to May of that year. Nevertheless, "the work finished in April of 2006", that is to say almost 4 years later.

In some cases, according to the AGN, "due to the readjustments and redeterminations of the prices they were processing, they denature the spirit of calling for Public Bidding", since "in many cases it ends up being a different, larger project."

The report, approved in early 2016, reveals "the shortcomings of the under secretariat in its role of supervisor works." The data is clear from the 310 reports to which the Audit had access, there were 39 reports requested that were not provided by the audited agency.

In 54% of the files were found shortcomings such as "lack of physical and / or financial progress of the work, confusion between both advances, lack of signatures, stamps and dates, lack of homogeneity in supervision reports", among others.

These types of problems have an "impact on other areas that take the data from those reports for their tasks" such as the collection of work certificates.

An emblematic case of the multiple observations that realized the AGN occurred in Animaná, Salta. There was work done to repair and construct defenses, and in turn, to rise a pedestrian and vehicular bridge on the river San Antonio.

The latter was "not installed" so it is evident that "the work started in mid-2011, at the close of the audit, was unfinished." "The gap between physical and real progress" since in the file "there is a physical advance of 95% as of June 2012 and it is not in line with what was observed by the auditors in February 2014." Sufficient example is the bridge that was not and above, the pieces to assemble it were in "the precarious state of conservation."


The audit team found that "more than half the deadline was awarded to a new contractor, but there was no evidence of work in the area." In turn, "the technical and accounting documentation of the work was not in the Municipality" and there were "administrative weaknesses" such as signatures of SSRH officials crossed out and duplicate invoices.

Finally, the National Audit found that "there are no criteria and parameters to determine priorities for the selection and subsequent execution of works". In fact, not only do they not appear in the Strategic Territorial Plan - Argentina in the Bicentennial, but the authorities of the audited entity indicated that "the projects are financed as they are requested by the officials of each province or jurisdiction without reference to plans or Strategic programs."