Argentina – Press coverage
June 12, 2012 Leave a comment
Argentina Has Gradually Destroyed A Once Promising Energy Industry
Over the past few years Argentina has seen the nationalization of pension funds, the re-allocation of central bank reserves and most recently they have experienced the nationalization of 51 percent of Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF), a former state oil firm. The nationalization targeted specifically the shares of Repsol, a Spanish company who purchased the shares in 1999, six years after YPF was privatized.
Strike slows flow of grains to top Argentine port
BUENOS AIRES, June 11 (Reuters) – Grain trucks entering Argentina’s main port of Rosario slowed to a trickle o n Monday due to a five-day-old sales strike by farmers, but exports remained uninterrupted due to ample dockside reserves. The sales freeze, set to end at midnight on Tuesday (0300 GMT Wednesday), was called last week by growers angry about national government agricultural policies and a recent tax increase in No. 1 soy- and corn-producing province Buenos Aires. Argentina is a top exporter of both crops at a time of increasing world demand.
Only 881 trucks entered Rosario in the 24 hours through mid-morning o n M onday, down from 3,800 on the same day last year, the Rosario grains exchange said on its website. About 80 percent of Argentina’s farm exports are shipped
from terminals that line the Parana River at Rosario, offering quick access to the shipping lanes of the South Atlantic.
“There were stocks piled up at the grains terminals before the strike started. If the strike ends tomorrow, as we expect it
to, there should be no slowdown in the export rate,” said Patricia Bergero, an analyst at the Rosario grains exchange.
As angry as they are about profit-siphoning wheat and corn export curbs imposed by President Cristina Fernandez and the land tax hike, farmers were not expected to extend their action past Tuesday or repeat the huge, 2008 tax protests that paralyzed the sector.
Argentina’s Fernandez To Decide On ‘Pesofication,’ Cronista Says
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner will decide in coming days whether to support legislation that would force all financial transactions to be carried out in pesos, newspaper El Cronista reported, citing Agustin Rossi, the leader of Fernandez’s Victory Front alliance in the lower house of Congress.
Lawmaker Edgardo Depetri on June 7 presented a bill that would force all contracts, including real estate transactions that are normally done in dollars, to use the peso in future. The legislation wouldn’t affect dollar bank deposits or existing contracts.
