Rio Negro and its financial-budgetary structure during the first decades of its creation as a Province

Abstract

The creation of the Province of Río Negro in 1955 initiated a process of construction and organization of the public sector and its financial-budgetary structure, where the public budget, from a modern conception, is a legal, administrative-financial and economic policy instrument that embodies a government plan. Within this framework, the aim of this paper is to find out how the financial-budgetary structure of Río Negro was configured and to describe the composition of public expenditure between 1957 and 1975, the years in which the institutional framework and the gestation and execution of development programmes took shape. The research methodology is qualitative, the data collection technique is documentary observation and the primary sources of information are laws, decrees and provincial and national resolutions passed between 1955 and 1975. The analysis of historical information shows that until the end of the 1960s, the Provincial State prioritised the allocation of public spending on institution building and economic development, while from 1968 to 1975 it focused mainly on the social dimension. On the other hand, the normative instruments that grouped expenditures according to different criteria were, in part, a consequence of the needs inherent to the performance of functions by the provincial state. During the first years of its creation, there was an administrative-institutional classification of public spending that made it possible to identify responsibilities. Since 1960 and within the framework of the implementation of provincial development policies, a distinction was made between ordinary expenditures and those destined for investment. At the end of that decade and with the inclusion of the classification of public expenditure by purpose, the analysis made it possible to identify the priority of public expenditure allocated to services provided by the state to the community.