10/01/2020 - 17:57
Clarín.com
Economy
The national government announced this Thursday a range of economic measures, which will be complemented by changes in the monetary policy of the Central Bank and which are fundamentally aimed at stopping the drain on international reserves due to the extreme difficulties in meeting the demand for dollars.
"It seeks to strengthen the external front, international reserves," summarized the Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán, detailing each of the actions that will be implemented to promote savings in pesos, stimulate domestic consumption and underpin the recovery of the economy, and mainly exports to increase the income of dollars.
One of the actions that the Government will implement consists of a reduction in export duties, especially in the withholdings on soybeans.
As indicated, this canon will drop "from the current 33% to 30% in October, growing to 31.5 in November, 32 in December, converging to 33% in January."
"There are reductions for crude soybean oils, bottled refined soybean oils, soybean hulls and biodiesel, for oils the reduction reaches 27% in October, converging to between 30-31% in January 2021, establishing a gap between the grain and oils. And for biodiesel the aliquot is reduced from 30% to 26% in October 2020, converging to 29% in January 2021 ", it was detailed.
The Minister of Economy was in charge of remarking that all the efforts are aimed at containing "strong pressures on the exchange front".
"These without defensive measures, are measures that have to do with a transition situation, in order to change the regulatory scheme we need to have more strength and the way to achieve that is by accumulating reserves," he added.
"What is being sought now
in the first place is to stop the fall in reserves
, and then be able to accumulate reserves. Measures have been presented that go in that direction. Stabilizing the Argentine economy is a process," he added.
Guzmán was in charge of the presentation together with his partner from Desarrollo Productivo, Matías Kulfas;
and of Agriculture, Luis Basterra
.
"We announced a set of measures that has to do with the path of macroeconomic management, with promoting key sectors for the development of exportable goods and promoting the domestic market, especially construction," Guzmán pointed out.
He noted that "the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic has announced a path for the course of monetary policy that implies a harmonization of the interest rate structure."
"We reaffirm our commitment to a policy of maintaining the stability of the real exchange rate,
" Guzmán emphasized.
He also indicated that they are taking measures linked to the industrial sector to "encourage production with greater added value, encourage exports and diversify the productive basket."
"Export duties on industrial final goods, except automotive, will be lowered to 0% and manufactured industrial inputs to 3%," he said.
Presenting the measures are also the presidents of the Argentine Industrial Union (UIA), Miguel Acevedo;
of the Argentine Rural Confederations, Dardo Chiesa;
and the Argentine Chamber of Mining Entrepreneurs, Alberto Carlocchia, among others.
The battery of actions includes the start-up of a fund of 11,550 million pesos to compensate small soybean producers and cooperatives;
the regulation of the Law of Social Solidarity and Productive Reactivation, which established a ceiling of 8% for metal export duties;
and the implementation of benefits to promote construction, such as the exemption in the payment of Personal Assets for three years on financial assets that are applied to new ventures
"In particular, construction is going to play a key role in the economic recovery," Guzmán said.
In the presentation, the head of the economic portfolio highlighted that the tax collection for August and September "
has followed a more positive path than the one we projected
" in terms of tax revenue amid the measures taken by the coronavirus pandemic.
In an interview before the announcements, Guzmán said that the level of activity
"shows signs of improvement"
after the abrupt significant drop in GDP registered in the second quarter of the year, while acknowledging that the situation "continues to be tough."
"We are
living a harsh reality all over the world
. We are living in a pandemic that caused a drop around the world and obviously a drop in Argentina," Guzmán said this afternoon in a web interview with the newspaper Ámbito Financiero.
Furthermore, "these economic measures that we have taken as the IFE, the ATP, have strongly helped to contain these negative effects" of the fall in economic activity, added the minister.
As Minister Guzmán anticipated, the intention of the national government is "to generate work and reduce inflation," as he explained in the online interview with Ámbito.
In that same meeting, the head of the Palace of Finance also anticipated that in monetary matters, "we must generate confidence to generate savings in our currency", while considering that "increasing exports will generate the ability to have reserves and a mattress of dollars. "
News in development.
AFG
