To have a prosperous future in Argentina, we need a good democracy. Indeed, Nobel Prize winners in economics, Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson, demonstrated that sustainable economic development requires transparent, representative and legitimate democratic institutions, because they are the ones that generate stable incentives for investment, innovation and a fair distribution of power and wealth. The real engine of the economy is invisible: Citizen confidence.
Our country is globally characterized by low levels of trust, both among people and from people to institutions. This can most likely be explained by the poor results we have achieved historically: we must realize that the state has not been effective in solving the problems faced by the population. For this to happen, it is necessary to reach better public decisions that allow us to build the most accurate and sustainable path to development possible.
For better overall decisions Access to public information is essential. Based on transparency, it is necessary that the climate of discussion also allows for the divergence of ideas and the arrival of the best decisions. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen made this point very clearly, linking the results achieved to transparency and access to public information in his famous 1999 speech, in which he claimed that there had never been a significant period of famine in an independent, democratic country with a relatively free press.
Last September 14 marked the anniversary of the passage of the Access to Public Information Act (the law we promoted at the SEPIC conference, in collaboration with many partners), which was supposed to be a cause for democratic celebration. However, what is worrying is that Decree 780/2024 is still in effect: this rule has narrowed the definition of “public information”, excluding data of a private or preliminary nature that requires identification of the applicant, thus restricting access to information that was previously public.
Access to public information is not the privilege of journalists, researchers or technocrats; It is a condition for the efficient performance of the state. Lack of access to public information affects the design of public policies, limits their monitoring and evaluation, but also opens the door to corruption and makes institutions lose their legitimacy. In the absence of this confidence, investors withdraw, creativity suffers, and the country loses opportunities. All this directly affects our future.
Without information to help us determine the direction we want, it is impossible for us to be able to create a path that allows us to solve our core problems. Restoring a well-established access to information policy is not just a decoration; Rather, it is a condition for the feasibility of the permanent development that we yearn for.
CEO of SEPIC