Por Gabriela Origlia
The reversal with the retroactive collection of the monotax increases ratify the improvisation that exists in the Government. Of course there are those who read the decision as the ability to recognize an error and amend it, but the reaction that those affected would have was obvious. Many took the zero-rate credit that Rosada offered last year, they are already paying it, they bill less because of the restrictions, they raise the load and charge them back.
With the debts already sent by the AFIP and some paying, it all ended with the president summoning the Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán, to a meeting to solve the problem with another bill. With the transport subsidies there are some similarities: the budget for the interior is well below inflation and is four times less than the amount allocated to the AMBA. Several strikes later, Minister Alexis Guerra admitted that money transfers to the provinces would rise by 30%.
They are problems that are added to others that have been coming for months. The economist Juan Carlos de Pablo understands that “the paralysis of the economic team is monstrous. There are initiatives that are on the verge of a joke. We face a very complicated trilogy: the health issue, the political issue and the economic policy issue ”.
These are discussions that could be avoided in a complicated scenario wherever you look at it: the OECD estimates that Argentina would only return in 2026 to the pre-Covid GDP per capita level, being the furthest behind in terms of recovery after South Africa. Faced with this, unfortunate phrases by President Alberto Fernández, inclusive language laws for the media, closure of exports amid the need for foreign exchange and price programs that are an “anchor” in the face of inflationary dynamics are mixed.
A study by economists Jorge Vasconcelos and Guadalupe González del Ieral estimates that if this month resembles May in terms of restrictions, the second quarter could be registering a GDP drop of close to 2.5% compared to the first (seasonally adjusted ), canceling a good part of the rebound in the level of activity verified at the start of 2021. Thus, in June of this year, GDP would be returning to levels similar to those of the fourth quarter of 2020.
The document reviews that the collection of taxes associated with the domestic market fell 5.3% in constant currency in May compared to April, after having fallen 1.6% in that month compared to March. These are monthly data, which do not only include what happened in the last part of May, when the brake on activity was much more intense.
For economists, it is possible that this phenomenon is anticipating an exhaustion of the recovery in demand observed in the previous months, but also (a non-exclusive factor) the financial fatigue of more and more taxpayers, overwhelmed by tax pressure. There is a growing gap between “salary goods” and workers’ income, and also a sharp rise (measured in financial dollars) of durable consumer goods and the cost of construction, among other options for applying savings.
After a March that showed growth of 2.4% in real terms compared to the same month of 2019 (the prepandemic year), the collection of taxes associated with the domestic market fell by 3.7% in April, to deepen the decline to 7 , 7% in May, always against the same month of 2019. This is a change of 10.1 percentage points from March to May. In this way, the slowdown in activity that arises from these first data could be anticipating that demand can no longer validate the monthly inflation rate of 4% in which the economy has been installed since October 2020.
In the first five months of 2021, fiscal and monetary prudence on the one hand, and the strong improvement in the terms of trade on the other, combined to reverse the excess of pesos and rebuild the diminished stock of net reserves of the Central Bank, which increased by $ 3.6 billion, to a level of $ 7.2 billion. Uncertainty does not allow, say the authors, does not allow this policy to be extrapolated to the remainder of the year.
–
