The Secretary of Industry and Productive Development of the Nation, José Ignacio de Mendiguren, presented this Tuesday the plan “Argentina Productiva 2030” whose purpose is to generate more than 3.5 million formal jobs in the private sector and create more than 100,000 companies throughout the country.
Unusually, the program –which has an extension of 368 pages– does not have a single measure aimed at increasing agricultural production.
The plan has several chapters, two of which are related to the agro-industrial sector. The first aims to “adapt food production to challenges” through 4.0 solutions, biological inputs, biotechnology, foodtech, irrigation systems and increased fertilization.
Incredibly, in order to meet such goals, it is not intended to increase the profitability of agricultural companies, which are precisely the users of such technologies, but to implement state policies, special commissions, training, studies, etc., etc.
With regard to fertilization, which is something very concrete, what does the document propose? Eliminate 10.5% VAT on fertilizers? Allow the deduction of 100% of that cost from Income Tax? No. It only indicates that it is necessary to “promote a favorable regulatory framework for the installation of a second urea plant” in the country. It’s that simple. How did they not think of it before?
The second item related to the sector consists – the document states – of “taking advantage of the traction potential of agriculture to promote agricultural machinery”.
#ArgentinaProductive 2030 is not just another plan, it is a strategic roadmap so that in a few years our country will have dollars left over to grow and develop. They are concrete policies for Argentina to take advantage of all its potential and be a protagonist in the world to come. pic.twitter.com/j9nlhQuxNb
— Vasco de Mendiguren (@dmvasco) March 28, 2023
For this, the magnificent plan ensures, it is necessary to “reduce the sectoral deficit through greater national integration -mainly in tractors and harvesters, where there is a greater presence of multinational companies with greater imported content-, and export promotion.”
And how do they plan to do it? “The first point requires, in addition to maintaining trade management mechanisms, avoiding the appreciation of the real exchange rate, advancing in the implementation of the new Capital Goods Bonus Regime, and promoting a greater scale and diversification of products to gain competitiveness and promote internationalization.
Translated: where it says “trade administration”, it should say restriction of imports of agricultural machinery and its parts and components with the hope that one day, who knows, an industry of its own may appear.
In none of the 368 pages of the text is it mentioned that the expansion of agricultural production is precisely the foundation of industrial and technological progress, since the very multiplication of wealth and the need to manage increasing volumes of grains are the drivers, in an economy market, economic and social development through the creation of new industrial and service companies.
