The Secretary of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries of the Nation, Juan Jose Bahillosaid this Tuesday that the comprehensive impulse plan presented by the Government is a “systemic approach” that aims to generate tools that facilitate the consumption of beef without affecting the prices that producers receive.
“Yesterday, Minister (Sergio) Massa announced a program with a technical focus, approached from production, from commerce, from tax matters, from making purchase discounts via electronic means, debit or credit card from Banco Nación to that people have access to more favorable prices for meat,” Bahillo pointed out in statements to Télam Radio.
Bahillo’s talk with Télam Radio
The measure was taken “seeing this complex problem due to the increase in the cost of meat in butcher shops from the recognized price that the standing farm had to recover, which was for eight months without raising the price.”
He explained that “when (the meat) sought its update, obviously, this is transferred to the consumer to a large extent and affected the purchasing power of wages.”
Along with the consumption measures, “a program is implemented through which livestock producers can send up to 100 heads to feedlots and the State subsidizes forty percent of the cost, this allows the completion of calves, fattening, and it gives livestock producers a good alternative, since we know that currently, due to the drought, the forage supply is very weak,” the official explained.
For his part, the Secretary of Commerce, Matías Tombolini, affirmed that the measures contemplate an “aggressive discount on grill cuts” with an average drop of between 30% and 35% in the prices of seven cuts, “which in Argentina represent approximately 30% of the 182 thousand tons per month that are consumed in the country”.
In statements to radio El Destape, Tombolini said that “it is an agreement that basically addresses a problem that we have all seen on the gondolas in the last 30 days, as a result of price recovery and for that reason we reached an agreement with the export sector to avoid price abuses.
The official explained that “the agreement deals with the offer on the one hand”, given that “subsidizes 40% of the feed for fattening with the aim of adding 200 thousand heads of supply in the next four months.”
“From the point of view of demand, we work with a multiple strategy in butcher shops,” which includes, on the AFIP side, the deferral of VAT and monotax payments and debit card discounts and purchase returns for Banco Nación customers.
Meanwhile, the president of Banco Nación, Silvina Batakis, explained that the official entity “made a refund of 35% of the purchase available for two months on Saturdays and Sundays, with a maximum of 3,000 pesos.”
In statements to Télam Radio, Batakis said that “from Banco Nación we are also collaborating so that there is greater banking and formalization throughout the sector, that is important for the entire national economy”.
Batakis’ talk with Télam Radio
“In this sense, we are offering lines of credit for capital goods or work goods that have to do with a credit with a subsidized rate of up to 5 million pesos that helps butcher shops to modernize,” he added.
He also indicated that they are carrying out “an action of new posnet that will have a bonus of twelve months in the service” for these businesses.
From the private sector, Alberto Williams, president of the CABA Butcher Shop Owners Associationtold Télam that “Banco Nación can be interesting, but you have to bank the butcher and also the one who buys, hopefully it will work; informality in butcher shops is like everything else, the country has 40% informality.”
held that “Most (of the butcher shops) cannot sell with posnet because they get paid in 3 or 4 days and the butcher wants to collect in cash and if not he doesn’t lower meat”.
Regarding the seven cuts of the “Fair Meat Prices” program that will be sold in supermarkets, Williams considers the program “unfair competition” with butcher shops, because the offers are only available in large supermarkets.
Williams also warned that “suppliers are raising the price of meat” and that the outlook for the next few days is “for more increases.”
The program was announced in the midst of a context of rising consumer beef prices after the increase in the value of consumer goods since mid-January.
