05/02/2020 - 14:31
- Clarín.com
- Politics
The managed quarantine phase opened the possibility for governors to allow some items to resume economic activity and now the Minister of Productive Development, Matías Kulfas, said that they are analyzing what new sectors could return in May.
"The different plants that can start operating are being analyzed in the industrial sector," the minister said in statements to CNN Radio's "Let's say everything" program . And he announced: " May will have a significant increase in the amount of activity that will be incorporated ."
"If we look at the employment side, 43% was what was working until recently. Then we went above 50% and I think that now we can take another important leap in May, " said the head of the Development portfolio. Productive. He added: "The distancing measures have been quite effective."
On the other hand, Kulfas explained that the government's objective is "to avoid the closure of companies and massive layoffs" in the pandemic, and maintained that economic activity "begins to take on another color" due to the opening of sectors in different provinces.
" The objective was to avoid closing companies and massive layoffs . Over the course of the month we are going to see the concrete effects," said Kulfas. And in that line, the national official pointed out that "companies did not come from a slack situation. We had a very bad 2018 and 2019, and for many SMEs this was a very strong blow."
The national government applied compulsory social isolation on March 20 due to the coronavirus pandemic, and after successive extensions extended it until May 10. And the head of Productive Development listed the measures they took to avoid greater economic consequences for companies: "Already on March 23 we had approved the emergency family income and it began to pay almost immediately, and on April 1 we implemented the Emergency Assistance Program for Work and Production (ATP) and which will allow the State to pay half the salary of the workers of the companies that have been affected. "
On the other hand, he maintained that at this time " economic activity begins to take a little bit different color because it has already been enabled for many provinces that do not have cases or that have everything relatively controlled, to begin to open and this will generate a movement important".
But Kulfas highlighted the main concern of the industrial revival: "The big problem to solve in the future is the use of public transport . "
And he gave a definition on fuel: "Naphtha will continue at this price, we have a scheme where the objective is to generate an internal reference price for producers. There is a tremendous crisis in the international oil sector, where demand fell by 30 % and prices plummeted, and it carries an enormous risk that Argentina will lose local producers and investments in the country, the risk is that when prices recover, expensive oil will have to be imported. What we seek is to equalize the market, so that we can having an oil market that maintains investments and as soon as the crisis is reversed, it can strongly recover its production. "
Source: Agencia Télam .