The agro-industrial sector represented in 2019 63.7% of exports, that is to say that of every $ 100 exported almost $ 64 was generated by the countryside.
InfoCampo – On Monday, March 9, farmers began the first strike against Alberto Fernández government as a result of a new rise in export withholdings, further suffocating the sector with more tax burdens.
Argentina has been economically stagnant since 2011. Since that year, we interspersed increases and decreases in activity, causing the GDP to oscillate around the same level (growing in electoral years and falling in non-electoral years, except in 2019, which also suffered a fall). Paradoxically, the great majority of political actors affirm that the recipe to get out of this recession is through exports to generate the genuine dollars that our country lacks so much.
We have a common saying that states easier said than done, and in this case it is no exception. The government seems to be doing everything possible so that the sectors that export the most produce less and that less Dollars enter the country.
The best example of this, is the situation for farm producers, which began a 4-day marketing cessation from March 9. The agro-industrial sector represented in 2019 63.7% of exports, that is to say that of every 100 dollars exported almost 64 dollars were generated by this sector. Thus, common sense would say that this sector should be incentivized to increase its production, increase competitiveness, and sell its products to the world. However, in Argentina the opposite is true, and for this reason we are one of the few countries that discourage the export sector from producing less, with the excuse that it is necessary to be “solidary” to finance unsustainable public spending.
Recall that the government of Alberto Fernández had “updated” the tax rates in December, bringing them from 24.7% to 30%, but in the emergency law, it left the door open for an increase of 3 percentage points more, which led to held on March 4. In addition, the implementation of the stocks and its consequent gap with the dollar Counted with Liquidation (CCL) generated a foreign exchange retention of 27.70% since if an exporter must sell his products to an official dollar of $ 62.50, but when he wants Buying dollars again makes it to a $ 86.50 dollar. Thus, the total retention on a soybean producer reaches 51% of its production.
The governmet argues that the protests from farmers are unjustified because there will be compensations for the smaller producers. Despite this, producers are suspicious, given that the Government is going to collect the total of the retentions first and then make a refund. Producers fear that returns will not end up being done, as happened in the 2008 conflict, or that such funds will be used to negotiate.
As we can see, the government of Frente de Todos is in a constant contradiction between the end it wants to achieve (increase in exports) with the means (withholdings). The day that we decidedly take our foot off it by eliminating all retentions, farmers will phenomenally increase the level of production, generating more work and more dollars for the country, and pulling the sectors related to the production indirectly. As, for example, the transport sector that is responsible for taking production to ports. Evidence of this was the record harvest of 136 million tons that occurred after Cambiemos decreased wheat and corn withholdings to zero, and the partial decrease in soybeans in the 2016/17 season.
Everyone, whether we are directly related to the countryside or not, we have to avoid this outrage against the most productive sector of the country because sooner or later, if they continue to squeeze them, they will end up melting and Argentina will be left without the main currency generator. . It is now when you have to go out to defend the field, tomorrow will be late.
