Silvia Naishtat
09/08/2021 19:24
Clarín.com
Economy
Updated 09/09/2021 7:54 AM
In the last 20 years there have been some exceptional moments in Argentine foreign trade, but since 2011 things have gone from bad to worse. Exports in
decline that imply a lack of foreign exchange and explain the crisis.
A government study that spans those two decades and is astonishing with its level of precision from the Center for Production Studies directed by Daniel Schteingart reveals that
we place a few products in the world and most, from the field
. Another fact: external sales are concentrated in large companies.
"The concept of external restriction - that is,
the inability of a country to grow due to the lack of foreign exchange - is intrinsically linked to foreign trade and the balance of payments,
" says the study that is in official offices. Curious, because this work that came to light
to the compass of the restrictions on the export of meat,
a complex whose participation rose from 3.9% to 6.2%, going from fifth to fourth place. Here are his main conclusions:
As of 2011, Argentina experienced a
declining trend in its international exchange of goods
, understood as the sum of exports and imports, which went from a total of US $ 158,370 million in 2011 to US $ 114,240 million in 2019. The global contraction as The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic worsened this situation in 2020, bringing the total exchange to
US $ 97.3 billion
.
Brazil stood out for being
the most relevant commercial partner
, which is due to Mercosur, geographic proximity and, also, productive integration in the automotive sector.
However, in the last decade its weight in total Argentine trade has been reduced: from around 25-26% in the 2000s, it fell to 17% in 2020.
There are several reasons for this retraction.
Both countries were
economically stagnant in the last decade.
In turn, China became an increasingly supplier of manufactured goods, displacing Argentine and Brazilian suppliers.
Initially, the commercial relationship with China was in surplus, due to the export of agro-industrial goods.
During the last decade, due to the reduction in prices of the products exported by Argentina and the growing role of China in the trade of industrial manufactures, there is a deficit.
The loss of Brazil's participation in commercial exchange is fully explained by the Asian giant,
which went from 2.5% of the total in 2000 to 12.5% in 2020.
The United States lost ground and went from being the country's second trading partner to the third over the period.
Europe also lost relevance to Europe.
In 2000, Spain and Germany were among the five most important partners.
In 2020, none were in the top 5.
Just as these European countries lost weight, others gained prominence.
The most prominent is
Vietnam, which in 2020 became the country's fifth largest trading partner, thanks to its rapid economic growth.
Chile is important in the foreign exchange balance.
It occupies the first position in the ranking of accumulated balance of the trade balance, despite having lost weight in the ranking of total trade exchange.
It is a net claimant of products which resulted in a
cumulative surplus of $ 65.5 billion constant in 2020.
Trade relations with Algeria, Peru, Venezuela and Egypt are the ones that gave Argentina the most favorable balance of foreign exchange between 2000 and 2020.
The soy complex
remained first in the ranking,
going from 15.4% of exports in 2002 to 27.2% in 2020. Its best year was in 2016, with 32.7%.
The automotive complex moved to second place, beating the oil-petrochemical.
It reached its maximum in 2013 with 14.5% and in
2020 it had 7.7%,
a decline coinciding with the prolonged Brazilian recession.
The oil-petrochemical complex had 14.4% of exports in 2002 and
5% of exports in 2020
.
It is due to the decline in local hydrocarbon production, which began to reverse in the mid-2010s.
The corn complex went from 3.7% of the total to 11.3% in 2020.