Argentina: exporters warn about new trade restrictions

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – On February 1, upon opening the AFIP portal, hundreds of companies found that their ‘Financial Economic Capacity’, the equivalent of a score to define their possibilities to import, had dropped abruptly, according to La Nación.

Among them was an agro-exporting multinational, which depends on certain imports to produce soybeans, the primary source of foreign currency income.

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“The Chamber of Exporters of the Argentine Republic (CERA), an institution that brings together companies that sell abroad, stated these lines. The recent measure is causing operational implications that will undoubtedly affect the possibility of meeting the export objectives implicit in the Export Plan 2022,” warned Fernando Landa, president of the entity and director of the Techint Group.

Landa pointed out that, although General Resolution 4294 allows recalculating (reprocessing) the CEF valuation once a month if there is new information to be provided. It also allows a request for disagreement with the CEF value finally assigned; it does not consider the resolution times required in the productive export operations of high added value, nor the strong uncertainty that is added to the fundamental process of generation of foreign currency for our country.

The Argentine Chamber of Commerce and Services joined the claims. In a letter addressed to the head of the AFIP, Mercedes Marcó del Pont, and signed by Mario Grinman, president of the entity, they said that the claims of firms and chambers on the mechanism to establish the CEF coefficient are growing.

“At present, taxpayers are not aware of the parameters stipulated by the AFIP to grant the quota, which in many occasions is scarce, causing significant damage. It is worth adding that this situation is especially burdensome for new companies with no history of payments abroad or international trade operations”, they claimed.

They requested greater traceability and more flexible mechanisms for forming the CEF to avoid further hindering imports, especially inputs and raw materials essential for productive activity.