SII calls off strike after reaching agreement with Ministry of Finance

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SANTIAGO.- Today, the Internal Revenue Service (SII) cancelled the national strike it began on Monday of this week after the Ministry of Finance announced that it would not halt the modernization plan for the institution.

The Chilean Association of Internal Tax Officials (ANEIICH) stated that it had reached an agreement with the Undersecretary of Finance to "neither suspend, nor halt" the SII Modernization Plan.

It was also agreed that the plan would be implemented gradually.

The strike began after the Ministry of Finance announced that it had decided to bring the modernization process for the service to a halt.

The associations of SII officials and supervisors had been jointly demanding that the national director of the entity, Ricardo Escobar, resign "amid the obvious incompliance with agreements that had been previously reached with the workers and the failure of the planned modernization project".

Last week, the Budget Department said that it was impossible to finance the SII Bi-Centennial Modernization Plan, given the new public austerity guidelines. The project had planned to implement new technologies in the operations and human resources departments.