ABSTRACT
During the 1990s, private concessions of public services were considered by international organizations (World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, International Monetary Fund) as means to achieve better management and development of these services in many countries. In this context, the federal government of Argentina launched an extensive privatization program of public enterprises and administrations. In 1993, the government granted a regulated concession to an international group covering Buenos Aires and 13 nearby municipalities (then with more than 9 million inhabitants). This concession became a model at the international level (Lorrain 1999) as well as for the inner provinces of Argentina, and most of them chose to follow it. After the Argentinean economic crisis in 2001, these arrangements weakened and finally broke down. In 2006, the federal government implemented a new public organization in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Region (BAMR), with ambitious targets in terms of service accessibility.
