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Writer's pictureThe San Juan Daily Star

A lion’s share of Puerto Rico’s budget is spent on private contractors




By The Star Staff


About 60% of Puerto Rico’s budget, which is close to $14 billion, is spent on private contracting, Issel Masses Ferrer, the executive director of Sembrando Sentido, said Thursday.


“The reality is that in the last fiscal year, if we compare it with total public spending, it already exceeds 60% of what the money represents,” Masses said in a radio interview. “That is very important because we are seeing a [public] payroll that continues to go down, limited resources in the oversight bodies, less and less capacity within the government, and at the same time, a critical delegation of essential services to third parties.”


The nonprofit organization has scheduled the launch of its new page, Contracts in Law, for Saturday, where it will promote transparency, monitoring and evaluation of government contracting in Puerto Rico.


Masses pointed out that the increase in private contracting correlates with the rise in former government employees who return to work for the government as contractors.


“They cost us more. We don’t know the quality of the services, and the results are what we are experiencing every day; things are not improving,” she said. “It is clear, when we look at the data, when we look at our environment, that things are not improving even though contracting was the supposed solution to our problems.”

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