They will announce a temporary reduction of withholdings on soybeans and meat to encourage the liquidation of dollars

Esteban Fuentes

09/30/2020 - 19:25

• Clarín.com

• Rural

Given the shortage of dollars, the Government seeks to encourage agricultural producers to liquidate the grains they have saved from the old harvest estimated at US $ 10.6 billion between soybeans and corn.

Therefore, in the next few hours, the Executive Branch would

(the percentage is unknown) and on

dropping from 9% to 5%.

In addition, the reimbursement of withholdings would be paid to small producers that produce less than 1,000 tons, a provision that was established by the Minister of Agriculture,

last February but was never regulated.

As

able to find out

, there were two meetings between the economic team, headed by

, with some of the representatives of the agribusiness.

But the negotiations were stalled and said measures are taken directly by the Government without consensus with the members of the camp.

Anyway, they hope that once the announcements are made they will be called to explain the measures.

In this sense, it was learned that in these meetings from the agro-industrial sector they requested that a

made up of the Liaison Table and other union institutions of the sector to be able to carry a work agenda, beyond the Argentine Agroindustrial Council that has the only objective is to boost exports and generate employment.

The latest updated data from the Ministry of Agriculture as of September 9 of the 2019/20 campaign show that producers sold soybeans for 31.6 million tons, 62% of the 50.7 million tons harvested, less in comparison to the last cycle when they had sold 36 million tons on the same date, 65% of the production that had reached 55 million tons.

In the case of corn, sales accelerated and 36.8 million tons were sold, 71% of the 51.5 million tons compared to 34.5 million tons (68%) of the 2018/19 cycle in the same period .

Thus, producers have in their hands almost 20 million tons of soybeans for a value of

and around 14 million tons of corn for an amount of 2,600 million dollars. 

Currently, the "

is around 50 pesos taking into account the official exchange rate and the 33% withholdings that end up being discounted from the price.

Thus, with the blue dollar exceeding 140 pesos, the producers keep the grains as their "bargaining chip."

Therefore, according to sources from the agricultural business consulted,

because it is isolated and what affects producers above all is the

.

Another measure that this economic package would include is

It is that several meat packing plants were excluded in the export sector due to the percentage of withholdings

and the drop in prices that occurred due to the coronavirus pandemic.

So, with this new rule, the Government wants there to be more cold stores that can return to the export business, 

It was the same Minister of Production, Matías Kulfas, who asked the sector two days ago for the numbers on how this reduction in withholdings would impact in this segment, which would have a fiscal cost of almost 100 million dollars.

In 2019, beef exports were record with almost 800,000 shipped for a value of more than 3,000 million dollars.

And this year, with data from the Argentine Beef Promotion Institute,

​

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